Israeli soldiers killed three members of the militant group Hamas and destroyed a house in a village south of Gaza City early this morning, Palestinians said.

Israeli forces entered the village of Mujarkha before daybreak, apparently looking for Adnan al Houl, a local Hamas leader, and surrounded his house. In an exchange of fire, three Hamas activists were killed, including a cousin of Mr. Houl, who was not at home at the time. During the raid, soldiers destroyed the house.
Israeli military sources would say only that an operation was in progress in the area today, and that one Israeli soldier was slightly wounded.

On Thursday, a teenage Palestinian, said by the Israeli authorities to be 15, shot and killed a telephone company technician on the job in an Israeli Arab village, Baka el Gharbiya. An armed guard seriously wounded the youth, who was then captured.

Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility. The group is linked to the mainstream Fatah faction of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, and of the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who is pressing for the cease-fire.

After the shooting, Israeli security officials said, the police spotted two men carrying backpacks. Details of what followed were not immediately released, but the authorities said the officers shot and killed both men and determined that they were carrying explosives, which were destroyed.

Two other men were then arrested in the same area, which borders the West Bank, and were identified as having sent the others to be suicide bombers, security officials said.

On Thursday night, a Palestinian sniper seriously wounded an Israeli driving through the West Bank, near Bethlehem. Earlier, Hamas fired two crude rockets over the fenced boundary of the Gaza Strip into Israel, without injuring anyone, the army said.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday morning, Mr. Arafat declared that he expected a cease-fire to be announced "in a few hours." But the next hours brought only the rash of violence.

Militant leaders here from Hamas and Islamic Jihad acknowledged for the first time that an agreement to suspend violence against Israel was all but completed. "There will be something new," said Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader. "But not yet."

Palestinian officials said they expected the agreement to be announced before the arrival of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, in Israel on Saturday. She is hoping to move forward with the new international peace plan.

Palestinian officials said the cease-fire would apply to violence against all Israelis, including settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Most Palestinians consider such violence in the territories, which Israel captured in 1967, to be legitimate resistance.

Militants said the truce would depend on a halt by Israel of its pinpoint killings of accused terrorists and other tactics. Israel has recently conducted a series of missiles strikes and mass arrests that Palestinians have called provocations.

Israeli officials have said they will not stop relying on tactics like pinpoint killings, calling them bulwarks against terrorist attack.

To comply with an Israeli obligation under the new peace plan, the Israeli Army tried to remove a cluster of trailers that Israeli settlers had set up in the West Bank. But a court injunction blocked the move, pending a hearing on Sunday. So far, settler watchdog groups say, such outposts are going up about as quickly as others are being dismantled.