Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants exchanged fire on the border with the central Gaza Strip Thursday morning, both sides reported.
Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein said three Palestinian sisters, aged around 13, 8 and five, were injured by shrapnel from tank or artillery shells fired by the Israeli military toward the village of Johur Addik, DPA reported.
The village is located a few hundred metres from the border, east of the former Jewish settlement of Netzarim and south-east of Gaza City.
Israeli troops crossed some 200 metres into the Gaza Strip from the border and fired the shells, after Palestinian militants opened fire at soldiers stationed near the border fence, a military spokesman in Tel Aviv said.
The Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling, meanwhile said in a statement sent to reporters that one of its militants was killed in a "special Jihad mission," without giving details.
It was not immediately clear whether his death was related to the exchange of fire near the central Gaza border.
Israeli shells injure three Palestinian sisters
