Gaza mortar attack kills Israeli civilian

KFAR AZA, Israel (Reuters) - A Palestinian mortar attack from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip killed an Israeli civilian on Friday, a police spokesman and ambulance workers said.

After the mortar attack, an Israeli air strike killed two Hamas security men in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Palestinian medical officials said.

Palestinian militants from the Islamist group Hamas, who regularly fire rockets and mortars into Israel from Gaza, claimed responsibility for the attack on the Kfar Aza collective farm in southern Israel.

Such attacks rarely cause death or injury but sow panic in border towns. Ambulance workers said the dead civilian was a middle aged man and three other people were wounded.

The last time an Israeli civilian was killed by cross-border fire, on February 27, the attack was followed by days of Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip which left more than 120 Palestinians dead. Many of them were civilians.

Palestinian medical workers said four other Hamas security men were killed in the Israeli air strike in Gaza.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was checking the report.

Israel frequently conducts raids in Gaza which it says are aimed at curbing the rocket fire.

Separately, a Palestinian gunman was killed in a clash with Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Friday, Palestinian security sources and Israeli emergency workers said.

Israeli and Palestinian sources offered differing accounts of the incident near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Palestinian security sources said the gunman was killed by Israeli soldiers.

Israel's ZAKA emergency service said the gunman was killed by armed Israeli settlers who had come under attack.

The Israeli army said it was investigating the incident.

In December, Palestinian militants killed two off-duty Israeli soldiers who were hiking in the West Bank, in a clash that left two of the gunmen dead.

(Reporting by Yehuda Peretz and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Editing by Charles Dick)