GAZA, 20 August — Israeli troops killed four Palestinians in the Gaza Strip yesterday and shot dead an unarmed Palestinian walking home. Israeli helicopters, meanwhile, fired two missiles at a Palestinian security post in the town of Khan Younis.

Late last night, three Palestinians, including two children, were killed and nine others injured by Israeli gunfire in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said.

The two children killed were an eight-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy. The third victim was their father, Samir Abu El-Az. All the dead and injured were members of the same family. The sources said their home was directly hit by an Israeli-fired missile.

The Israeli Army said the helicopter attack was on the Force 17 security service post while tanks shelled a police post in the same area.

The army had no comment on the West Bank killing of Mu’in Abu Lawyeh, 38, who had been walking on an unpaved road to avoid the Israeli military checkpoints that seal off Palestinian towns. Five Palestinians were also wounded, the officials said. Abu Lawyeh was returning to his village from the West Bank city of Nablus with school supplies he had bought for his children, the hospital officials said.

Earlier in Rafah, thousands of Palestinians joined the funeral of Muhammad Abu Arrar, 14, hours after Israeli troops killed him near the frontier with Egypt. The boy had been throwing stones.

The bloodshed overshadowed a push by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for talks on implementing a US-brokered cease-fire after nearly 11 months of fighting.

Peres said Saturday that Israeli officials were “conducting conversations” with Palestinian counterparts on the truce, accepted by both sides in June but otherwise unheeded.

But senior Palestinian officials dismissed the remarks as a publicity stunt. “The Israeli government has cut off all political contacts and is trying to fool the world by pretending there are contacts with the Palestinians,” President Yasser Arafat’s aide, Nabil Abu Rudainah, said.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon also said no talks are under way with the Palestinians. “Right now there are no real talks going on,” said spokesman Raanan Gissin on Cable News Network (CNN).

Sharon’s adviser Gissin said Israel was “willing to ease restrictions in places where there is no violence.” Israeli forces have imposed a crippling blockade on the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the uprising as collective punishment. “The Israeli government has turned the West Bank and Gaza into the biggest prison on earth,” Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat said.