Nusseirat Refugee Camp (Gaza Strip), March 7 (Reuters): Armoured Israeli forces raided two Gaza refugee camps today, igniting gunbattles that killed 14 Palestinians after militants staged an audacious attack on Israeli soldiers at Gaza’s border.

Ten of the dead were gunmen — nine from the powerful Islamist faction Hamas — and the rest were civilians including three boys, a Hamas statement and hospital medics said.

Seventy-two Palestinians were hurt, including several teenagers who threw stones and petrol bombs at the Israelis, who took no casualties. Violence has escalated in the Gaza Strip since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a unilateral plan last month to evacuate Jewish settlers from occupied areas of the territory.

Analysts say militants are keen to bloody Israelis as much as possible beforehand to portray any pullout as a victory for their fight. Israel, they say, wants to avoid that impression by striving to cripple militant groups before it quits Gaza.

Dozens of armoured vehicles joined the sweep for militants in the teeming Nusseirat and al-Bureij camps in central Gaza. Tanks and troops backed by helicopters fought militants armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers.

“Soldiers blasted their way into our housing block at 4 am,” said Mahmoud Abu Hujair, a father of three. “They turned our roof into a base to battle gunmen. Women and children were screaming. The building was heavily damaged.”

Israeli forces withdrew mid-morning, around five hours after sweeping in under cover of darkness.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie’s cabinet denounced the raids as “state terror against our people” which undermined Palestinian calls for a mutual ceasefire and revival of a US-backed “road map” peace plan.

An Israeli army spokesman said the raids were “pinpoint” pre-emptive strikes against “terror groups” who had been escalating gun, mortar and rocket attacks on Jewish settlements in Gaza and border areas for months.

Israel blames the peacemaking impasse on the Palestinian Authority’s failure to subdue militants opposed to the road map — which charts reciprocal steps to a Palestinian state on land seized by the Jewish state in the 1967 Middle East war.

Yesterday, six Palestinians were killed during an abortive assault by militants in fake Israeli army jeeps at the Erez crossing. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said they carried out a joint strike and pledged more attacks. It followed an Israeli missile strike on Wednesday that killed three Hamas militants in central Gaza.

More than 50,000 Palestinians joined funeral marches today for the casualties in Israel’s incursion and the Erez attack. Militants loosed rifle volleys into the air and swore revenge with a further wave of suicide bombings in Israel.

“The reaction of this crime will be very soon and we say to the Zionists that any restaurant or bus or bus stop may be a target of our heroic explosions,” said one masked militant.

Sharon wants to remove some 7,500 settlers from Gaza and uproot a few isolated West Bank settlements if he judges the road map, now blocked by persistent violence, irretrievable.