Tel Aviv/Gaza - Israeli soldiers and militant Palestinians clashed briefly in the Gaza Strip border area on Saturday, amid conflicting accounts of where the clash took place.

Both the military and local Gaza eyewitness accounts agreed there was an exchange of fire when Israeli soldiers arrived at the border fence to carry out controlled detonations of explosive devices.

But an Israeli army spokeswoman, while confirming the exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants, denied that the incident took place on Gaza territory.

The spokeswoman said Israeli soldiers came under fire when they approached the border fence. The Israeli soldiers returned the fire and there were no casualties, she said.

Earlier, local Gaza witness accounts claimed that the clash was triggered when Israeli tanks and bulldozers had entered the Khoza'a area in eastern Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip. The bulldozers started to level the land, destroying fields and farms in the area, the residents said.

The troops withdrew around the noon after Gaza militants said they exchanged fire with the forces.

During the operations, the Israeli forces detonated two explosive devices that were planted by Palestinian fighters near the security fence.

The Egyptian-brokered Israeli-Hamas ceasefire of last June witnessed a series of violations this week with the death of 7 Palestinians, most of them Hamas fighters, in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations near the border fence of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, fired tens of missiles into Israel following the first incursion and airstrikes on Tuesday. Hamas held back later, but other factions who reluctantly accepted the ceasefire continued firing the home-made rockets.

The ceasefire aims at easing the Gaza blockade, which Israel imposed to isolate Hamas, in exchange for halting cross-border violence.

In another incident of conflicting accounts, the Israeli military denied an Islamic Jihad claim that a barrage of rockets had hit Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip early Saturday.

A spokeswoman said that rockets had not been launched on Israeli towns from Gaza and there had been no response from Israeli forces as the Palestinian militants had claimed earlier Saturday.

The Islamic Jihad faction had said its armed wing had fired 10 homemade rockets into Israeli cities near the Gaza Strip.

It claimed Israeli planes responded by bombing four abandoned rocket launchers in the northern Gaza Strip. (dpa)