The Israeli military has announced in a statement that its soldiers shot at least two Palestinians dead in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The military said on Thursday that the Palestinians were killed as they were approaching a boundary fence in the east of the coastal enclave.

The statement also claimed that the two Palestinians were armed and were trying to infiltrate into Israel. A military spokesman, however, told AFP that the men were killed inside the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said Israeli tanks fired a small barrage of artillery into eastern Gaza after launching a limited incursion into the region.

Earlier on Wednesday, Israeli troops forcibly entered Palestinian homes in the northern West Bank and handed out summons to several civilians.

Israel claimed its existence in 1948 during full-scale military operations against the Arab world, forcing 711,000 Palestinians to leave their homeland.

In 1967, Tel Aviv went on to occupy and later annex the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem), the promised capital of the future Palestinian state, in defiance of the international community’s refusal to recognize the annexation.

Estimates in 2008 put the number of the refugees at over 4.6 million.

(Press TV)