A Gaza militant group on Friday denied killing eight Israelis the day before but Israel continued to hunt down its members, killing the sixth in 24 hours of air strikes on Gaza.

An Israeli air strike on the northern Gaza Strip killed a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, which Israel blames for a deadly series of ambushes on its citizens along the Israel-Egypt border Thursday, the group said. It named him as Saber Abed, 25.

Another person was killed and three wounded in two earlier Israeli air raids on Friday, on the eastern edge of Gaza City.

"Over the course of this afternoon and early evening... aircraft targeted terrorists as they were preparing to launch rockets at Israel from three separate locations in the northern Gaza Strip. Hits were confirmed," the military said in a statement.

The strikes raised to nine the total number of Gazans killed in the past 24 hours since Israel began raids in retaliation for the shooting attacks in the Negev Desert.

Israel killed five PRC members in a retaliatory air strike on Thursday but a PRC spokesman said on Friday that it was not responsible for the Negev assaults.

"We salute (the operation) and we are proud of it, but we do not claim it," spokesman Abu Mujahid told AFP in the Gaza city of Rafah as the faction buried its dead.

Shortly before the Friday evening strike killed Abed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that Thursday's raid on the PRC was "just the first response."

"We have a policy of extracting a very heavy price from those who strike at us," a statement from his office quoted him as saying.

In Thursday's attack, at least seven gunmen armed with explosives, grenades and other weaponry, sneaked into southern Israel and fired at cars and buses, killing six Israeli civilians, a soldier and a policeman.

Several hours later, the air force bombed targets in Rafah, killing the PRC leader and several more of the faction's top cadres, as well as a toddler. Another person died in an overnight air raid.

Israel said six of the Negev gunmen were shot dead on Thursday, while a seventh blew himself up. Others are believed to have fled across the Egyptian border.

It was widely reported that between 15 and 20 militants had been involved in the attack, and Israeli and Egyptian forces were sweeping the border area on Friday to find any who may have escaped.

Egypt's military chief of staff, Sami Enan, headed to the Sinai on Friday to probe the deaths of the policemen killed the previous day as Israeli forces pursued the militants, a military source said.

The official Egyptian MENA news agency said on Friday that Cairo had filed a protest with Israel over the incident.

"Egypt filed an official complaint with Israel following yesterday's deaths at the border between Israel and Egypt," MENA reported.

An Israeli military spokesman, while not confirming or denying that an Egyptian complaint had been received, said that events on the border would be closely investigated.

"The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) will investigate the matter thoroughly and update the Egyptians," he said.

There have been conflicting reports from the military and police about how they lost their lives.

A military official told MENA on Thursday night they were accidentally killed by Israeli helicopter fire aimed at the fleeing gunmen.

But on Friday, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper quoted a military official as saying the policemen were killed by gunmen trying to slip in from Israel.

Enan's visit was announced shortly after another policeman was declared dead following a border gunfight on Friday, which left one of his comrades gravely wounded with a bullet in the head.

Earlier, Israeli security sources told AFP they had information that a man had blown himself up on the Egyptian side of the border, saying they believed he was one of the men on the run.

And state television said that on Thursday, two "unidentified Egyptians" had been killed by Israeli gunfire in an area near the site of the attacks.

As the Israeli air force pounded targets across Gaza, militants there lobbed 14 rockets at south Israel on Friday. Three people were wounded -- one seriously and one moderately -- in the city of Ashdod, police said.

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