Three Palestinian gunmen, an Israeli officer and two Israeli civilians were killed today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In what the militant Islamic group Hamas called revenge for Israel's killing of one of its top commanders, a gunman hurled hand grenades and sprayed automatic weapons fire in the Karni terminal where goods move between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Two Israeli workers were killed and three wounded before soldiers and armed guards shot the attacker dead, the army said.
Hamas said the Karni assault was to avenge an Israeli air strike that killed senior Hamas leader Sa'ad al-Arbeed, one of his deputies and five other Palestinians a week ago in Gaza City.
Earlier today, Israeli soldiers killed a Hamas gunman who shot at troops who came to arrest him and two other militants in an apartment building in the West Bank city of Nablus.
An army lieutenant was shot dead in the incident, another soldier was wounded and two of the wanted men were taken into custody, the army said.
In further violence, a militant from the Islamic Jihad group was killed by rockets fired from an Israeli army watchtower in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. Islamic Jihad said Abdel-Hamid Abu el-Eish was one of itsfield commanders.
The surge in violence cast a new shadow on US efforts to press ahead with a peacemaking "road map" that calls for end to Israeli-Palestinian fighting and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.