GAZA CITY (AFP) -A Palestinian was killed by Israeli tank fire in northern Gaza as ground troops pressed on with an offensive against militants firing rockets into the Jewish state, a medical source said.

Mohammed al-Jarjawi, 20, was shot as Israeli tanks operated in the area of Beit Lahiya and fired off shells near a residential area, the medical source and witnesses said.

It was not immediately clear whether he had been fighting the Israeli troops or was a civilian.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had opened fire on a “suspicious person” without being able to say if the person had been armed.

Jarjawi was killed as Israeli aircraft attacked a building in Gaza City as Palestinian militants fired two rockets across the border into southern Israel.

The air strike was ordered against “a structure” used by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah organisation “for terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip,” the army said.

The military said it would continue to act “against terrorist organisations and terror infrastructure regardless of their organisational affiliation in order to stop terror attacks and the launching of rockets towards Israel”.

The army also said two Palestinian rockets exploded in southern Israel causing neither damage nor casualties.

Thursday’s latest death brought to 5,584 the number of people killed since the 2000 start of the intifada, the great majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

Since late June, Israeli troops have been conducting frequent incursions into the northern Gaza Strip in a bid to stop the rocket attacks.