Three Palestinians, including a teenager have been killed by Israeli tank fire in Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.
The three, a 14-year-old boy, and two men aged 45 and 50, were killed after a tank shell hit their house. Four others were wounded.
An army spokesman told AFP that the military targeted militants who had fired rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon north of Gaza.
'Two rockets were fired at Ashkelon, without causing casualties,' he said on Monday. 'We identified those who fired the rockets and opened fire on them.'
The radical Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the rockets, saying it fired them in response to 'the Zionist agression against the Palestinian people and our brothers in Lebanon.'
The rockets were fired at 8:15 am (0515 GMT), a quarter of an hour after a UN-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect on the ground in Lebanon.
At least 175 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed, according to an AFP count, since the Israeli army launched a massive offensive in Gaza on June 28, after militants from Gaza killed two soldiers and seized a third in a cross-border raid.
At least 5,327 people have been killed, the majority of them Palestinians, since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, according to an AFP count.