Israeli troops kill 5 more Palestinians

The dead included a local commander of Hamas Islamic militants in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp, the focus of Israel's biggest push into the occupied territory in four years of conflict, witnesses said.

Scores of Palestinians have died in the offensive, now in its 11th day.

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Earlier on Saturday troops killed two militants in a gunfight at nearby Beit Hanoun, one of the main launch sites for the makeshift rockets, and two Palestinian policeman in a missile strike on a refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

In Egypt, rescue workers searched for survivors in the wreckage of a Red Sea hotel after a series of bomb blasts targeting Israeli tourists in the Sinai Peninsula. Israel suspects Thursday night's attacks, which killed at least 33 people, were linked to al-Qaeda.

Violence in Gaza has soared ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned withdrawal of troops and settlers next year from the territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Militants want to claim any pullout as a victory for a Palestinian uprising launched in 2000. Israel is determined to smash them first and Sharon needs to put on a show of force for rightists who oppose the plan on the grounds it "rewards terrorism."

At least 86 Palestinians, 50 of them militants and most of the others civilians, have been killed in the offensive with some 200 tanks and armored vehicles that was launched after a rocket attack killed two Israeli toddlers on Sept 29.

Three Israelis have died since the offensive began.

The armed wing of Hamas, a group sworn to Israel's destruction, said local leader Abdel-Raouf Nabhan was shot dead on Saturday. Witnesses had earlier said he was killed in a missile strike.

The army said it shot at militants trying to launch a rocket and that might have caused an explosion.

Two fighters were also killed in Beit Hanoun on Saturday as troops moved in to demolish the home of a militant it killed in an earlier missile strike as he tried to leave a rocket launch site with a donkey cart, witnesses said.