Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on October 8 Army raids into the Gaza Strip would go on, a day after a bloody incursion killed 14 Palestinians and drew strong international rebukes, including from Israel's top ally Washington.

The right-wing leader, forced to bow to US pressure in September to end his siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's base, was in a defiant mood despite Washington saying it was "deeply troubled" by Monday's storming of the Gaza town of Khan Yunis.

"The complicated operation we carried out (on October 7) was a success. It was an important one and there will be other anti-terrorist operations of this sort in the Gaza Strip," Sharon told Army radio.

His comments appeared to fly in the face of US attempts to calm the region ahead of expected strikes against Baghdad, as Israel warned that while it respected Washington's agenda, it had its own security priorities.

An official from Sharon's office insisted that despite Washington's call for restraint, the US administration "recognises Israel's right to defend itself against terrorism".

"The Israeli Army will continue its operations if the Palestinian Authority does not decide to prevent terrorists from carrying out attacks," he said.

"If we have no other option, we will do the work ourselves in order to guarantee the security of Israeli civilians," the official said.

Israeli tanks and helicopter gun ships stormed into Khan Yunis in an operation the Army said was aimed at rooting out militants from the Islamic group Hamas, who had fired mortars at nearby Jewish settlements.

The raid and clashes which dragged on after the Army pulled back to the settlements cost the lives of 14 people, eight of them when a helicopter fired a rocket at a group near a mosque.

Israel said most of those killed were militants, while the Palestinians said only four of them were armed, including two police officers. All four armed men were killed in the rocket strike, they said.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We're deeply troubled by the reports of Israeli actions in Gaza over the weekend that resulted in the deaths and wounding of many Palestinian civilians."

"Israeli operations were undertaken in crowded civilian areas and involved firing on a medical facility," he said.

Israel, which reoccupied most of the West Bank in June and has been scouring the region for suspected militants ever since, keeping hundreds of thousands of Palestinian under regular curfew, has stepped up raids on the Gaza Strip in recent weeks.