Zionist troops backed by armor entered the Gaza Strip on Thursday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian resistance fighters, witnesses said, without immediately reporting any casualties.

Zionist troops backed by armor entered the Gaza Strip on Thursday, drawing mortar fire from Palestinian resistance fighters, witnesses said, without immediately reporting any casualties.

The incursion, east of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, came as Middle East peace talks faltered with the resignation of the entire Palestinian negotiating team in protest against continued Zionist settlement building.

"Six military bulldozers accompanied by several tanks entered about 200 meters (yards) from the border into farmland, as helicopters and spy planes circled above near the village of Khuzaa," one witness told media outlets.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said its fighters responded to the incursion with mortar fire.

Hamas has endeavored to enforce a year-old Egyptian-brokered truce with the Zionist entity which ended the last major outbreak of fighting in and around Gaza late last year.

On November 1, four Hamas fighters were killed and five Zionist troops wounded in an exchange of fire.

The casualties came during an incursion into the territory by the Zionist army to destroy a tunnel under the border it alleged was intended as a springboard for attacks inside the Jewish state.