Jerusalem ? Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli border policemen in the Gaza Strip on Saturday as calls mounted for speedy humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees in the northern West Bank city of Jenin.

The international community agreed to send a fact-finding mission to the camp, where residents dug through debris to salvage belongings and recover bodies.

As Israel scaled back its presence in West Bank cities after a three-week incursion, clashes increased in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military and medical authorities said a border policeman died in an attack by small arms fire and grenades at the Erez checkpoint, the heavily fortified crossing point into Israel. There was no immediate word of Palestinian casualties.

In a funeral procession in Gaza City, hundreds of chanting Palestinians carried the black-draped coffins of two militants of the Islamic Jihad organization killed in a gunbattle Friday with Israeli troops, in what Israel said was an attempt to stage a terrorist attack on the settlement of Netzarim.

“Sharon should expect all doors of hell to break loose,” vowed one masked militant, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “Let the enemy do whatever he likes. We are ready for martyrdom. But the occupation will never be safe on the land of historical Palestine, from the river to the sea,” the man told the crowd.

The two militants were among seven Palestinians, including two children, killed by army fire on Friday. Also, an activist from Islamic Jihad blew himself up at an army checkpoint, killing himself and wounding two soldiers.

Palestinians claim Israeli forces battling Palestinian gunmen in the fiercest battle of Israel’s 3-week-old military offensive massacred civilians – an accusation Israel vehemently denies. U.N. Mideast envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said Israel’s military campaign created a dire humanitarian situation and called the devastation “appalling,” but said “I am not accusing anyone of massacres.”

International calls to sort through the claims of both sides grew Friday.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council voted 15-0 Friday night to back a U.N. fact-finding team that will visit the Jenin refugee camp after Israel gave its approval to such a mission. The United Nations has declared the Jenin camp a disaster area.

The council voted hours after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, after consulting with Sharon, told Secretary-General Kofi Annan that his country would welcome a U.N. representative “to clarify the facts” of what happened in the camp.

“Israel has nothing to hide regarding the operation in Jenin,” Peres told Annan, according to Israel’s U.N. Mission. “Our hands are clean.”

The government of Spain, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, also issued an EU call for an impartial international investigation into the Jenin camp deaths.

Israeli troops pulled out of Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp early Friday. Israel began its massive West Bank military offensive on March 29 with the aim of crushing the Palestinian militias behind deadly attacks inside Israel over the past 18 months.

It has captured or killed at least 15 Palestinians on its most wanted list, according to the findings of Associated Press reporters in Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, who questioned Palestinian security officials, activists of the militant groups, hospital workers and relatives of those on the list published in January by the Israeli Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has said a gradual withdrawal from Palestinian cities would continue. By Sunday morning, he said, troops will have pulled out of Nablus and most of the town of Ramallah. Israel has said it will maintain its siege of Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader is confined to several rooms.

Late Friday and early Saturday, a Palestinian intelligence source said about 25 Israeli tanks were seen pulling out of Ramallah, heading north toward an Israeli military base outside the city. The Israeli army spokesman’s office said there was only “regular military traffic,” with no partial withdrawal or military operation in progress, and on Saturday the Israeli presence was undiminished.

Residents of the Jenin refugee camp picked through heaps of debris Friday, salvaging what possessions they could and looking for loved ones. One man salvaged a television. A woman saved a stringed lute. A girl found her white roller-skates.

So far, area hospitals have listed 43 bodies as having been retrieved from the camp. Of those, six were women, children or elderly men.

In the West Bank, international and local aid organizations trying to deliver food and medicines to Nablus were refused entry to the city by soldiers, despite having been granted prior permission, a relief worker said.

“We got the green light in the morning, but when we got to Nablus it seems the situation had changed,” said Peter Holland, of Oxfam Quebec, adding no reason was given for the reversal.

In the West Bank, a 4-day-old Palestinian, Dunya Ishtaya, died en route to a Nablus hospital Thursday night after the ambulance was stopped at Israeli army checkpoints, the family said.

Nasser Ishtaya, a photographer who covers the West Bank for The AP, said his daughter, who had been born five to six weeks prematurely, required urgent hospitalization Thursday evening. Ishtaya said he spent two hours getting Israeli permission to allow an ambulance to come to their home in the village of Salim 3 miles (five kilometers) from Nablus.

The ambulance also was delayed by military roadblocks into the village and on its way back to Nablus, he said. While waiting at an Israeli roadblock, a member of the ambulance crew said the baby had died, Ishtaya said. He blamed the Israeli army, saying “the occupation has ruined our dreams.”

Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli army spokesman, said he responded quickly to an appeal from The AP to get permission for the ambulance clear roadblocks and get to the hospital as quickly as possible. He expressed sorrow at the baby’s death.