Israeli warplanes have attacked Palestinian security targets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The attacks have been seen as an apparent response to today's suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv in which 25 people were wounded.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Tel Aviv attack, which followed an Israeli helicopter missile strike that killed a member of the militant Hamas Islamic group in the Gaza Strip yesterday.
The Tel Aviv attack took place when a man detonated an explosive belt he was wearing in an area closed off to traffic, near a disused bus station.
Three Palestinians were killed in two earlier incidents in the Middle East. A shell fired from an Israeli tank killed two Palestinian gunmen in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli Army said that its forces had spotted suspected gunmen trying to enter a Jewish settlement in the area.
A senior member of the militant group Hamas was earlier killed by a missile fired on his car by an Israeli helicopter gunship in southern Gaza. Two other people in the vehicle were seriously injured in the incident.
In a separate development, it has been announced in Washington that US President George W Bush has provided three Arab countries with what has been described as evidence that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was involved in trying to smuggle 50 tonnes of weapons to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
