Two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip today. An Israeli army spokeswoman said, troops aimed mortar and tank fire at the two men after they were spotted close to the border fence in the north of the enclave. She said. the soldiers believed they were planting explosives. One of the dead was a member of Gaza's ruling Hamas Islamist movement and the other was from an allied group, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC). It was the first such fatal attack by Israel in Gaza in nearly a month. Two Hamas militants were also killed on September 1, but Israel denied involvement in that case. The Israeli army said the two men who died today were involved in a mortar attack on Israel on August 24 that wounded an Israeli. Both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were observing major religious holidays today — the Jewish New Year and the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.