GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip ? Israel killed a leading Hamas militant and his assistant in a helicopter missile strike Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks that have sent militants into hiding and left a U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan in tatters.

Israeli troops also killed an 8-year-old girl and wounded seven other Palestinians with submachine gun fire in the Gaza Strip’s Khan Younis refugee camp, witnesses and hospital officials said. The girl, Aya Fayad, was shot in the chest by soldiers firing at the camp from a nearby military base.

Soldiers fired at an area where Palestinian militants were detonating roadside bombs on a patrol route, the army said. Militants in the same area later fired three mortar shells at a Jewish settlement, damaging a house but injuring no one, the army said.

The Palestinians asked for the United States to intervene. The strikes, coupled with a Jerusalem suicide bus bombing on Aug. 19 that killed 21, destroyed a cease-fire declared by militant group on June 29 and have seriously jeopardized the peace plan toward Palestinian statehood.

In Saturday’s attack, the Israeli helicopters fired four missiles at a pickup truck carrying the two Palestinian men, witnesses said. It was the fifth Israeli missile strike aimed at Hamas militants in 10 days.

The vehicle had been moving slowly in traffic when it was hit and burst into flames, witnesses said. Rescue workers rushed to remove the bodies, including one that was badly burned and missing a leg. Two bystanders also were wounded.

“A missile came and hit the car from the front, followed by another two. I saw one of the men inside the car jump out the window, but another missile hit him,” said Balal, 35, a witness who gave only his first name.

The two were identified as Abdullah Akel, 37, and his assistant Farid Mayet, 40, both members of the Hamas military wing, Izzedine al-Qassam.

Akel, a leading field commander in central Gaza, had fired mortar shells and homemade Qassam rockets at Israeli towns and Jewish settlements, and was preparing to fire more rockets when he was killed, the army said. Israel had jailed him for his membership in Hamas during the first Palestinian uprising, between 1987 and 1993.

Flanked by relatives, Abdullah Fayad, the uncle of 8-year-old Palestinian girl Aya Fayad carries her body in a blood-stained sheet from the main hospital wing to the morgue, roughly an hour after the girl was shot dead by Israeli troops, in the Khan Younis refugee camp. According to witnesses, the girl was shot in the chest, and several were wounded, when soldiers fired Saturday into the camp from a nearby army base.

Waving green Hamas banners and calling for revenge, some 5,000 Palestinians marched through the Nusseirat and Bureij refugee camps in a funeral procession for the two men.

An armed Hamas member told mourners that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “will soon receive a very painful message from the Hamas military wing in retaliation for his crimes against the Palestinian people.”

Israel stepped up its campaign against militants following the Jerusalem bus bombing, for which Hamas claimed responsibility. Since then, Israel has killed 10 Hamas militants including the two on Saturday.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said the missile strike was “part of the comprehensive war against the Palestinians” and blocked the resumption of peace negotiations.