Confusion over Palestinian's death

The killing follows Thursday's taxi attack

Israel's army has said that it killed a Palestinian man overnight, who they suspected was a terrorist in the process of planting a bomb by a roadside in Gaza.

But the Palestinians are claiming that the man, identified as Mustafa Ramlawi from the Bureij Refugee Camp, was in fact an innocent homeless man, who was mentally handicapped.

Initially the Israeli army claimed that by shooting the man the soldiers had thwarted an attempted attack against "civilians and soldiers travelling the road".

However, French news agency AFP has reported that another spokesman said that no bomb had been found and that the action may have been a mistake.

Israel's security forces are on high alert

"The soldiers saw a man who was walking with a sack. He was walking at night in an area that is a totally closed military zone," he is reported as saying.

According to an army communiqué the incident occurred in the early hours of Friday morning as the troops were in action along the Karni-Netzarim road.

Palestinian hospital officials described the man's body as mangled, a result of being hit repeatedly by heavy-calibre machine-gun fire and explosive shells.

'Fired without warning'

Speaking of the victim, the head of Palestinian national security in the northern Gaza Strip, Saeb al-Ajez, said:

"Everyone knew him, including the Israeli army in the area. The Israelis fired on him without warning.

"This man was not a danger. This is part of their policy of killing that we condemn, they have transformed Palestinian villages into military shooting zones," he added.

Israeli security forces are already in a heightened state of alert after an explosion in a taxi on Thursday.

Palestinian retaliation

The bomb ripped apart a van taxi on a main highway through Israel's north, killing Claude Knafo, 29, an Israeli passenger, and wounding nine other people, including a pregnant Israeli woman.

Police said one of the wounded was a terrorist who detonated a bomb he was carrying after police stopped the van at a roadblock.

A Palestinian militant group calling itself the Battalions of Return has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Israeli shelling of Palestinian villages.

At least 335 Palestinians, 61 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the violence which erupted following a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.