RAFAH (AFP) - An Israeli strike on Gaza overnight killed two people whom Palestinian officials described as border guards, but Israel said it had thwarted an attack in the advanced planning stage. “Two citizens were martyred and another was wounded in an Israeli air strike on a car in Rafah city,” Palestinian health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told AFP of the attack on the southern city. Officials in Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said the air strike killed two border guards and seriously wounded a third as they were patrolling the frontier with Egypt. The ministry named the two dead men as Lieutenant Ashraf Saleh, 33, and his deputy, Anis Abu al-Aynin, 22. The third, who was seriously hurt in the strike, which occurred just before midnight (2100 GMT Wednesday), was also a lieutenant in the security forces. “The martyrs were on their routine daily business of inspecting and securing the southern border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt,” a ministry statement said. Medics and an AFP photographer confirmed the strike hit an official security service vehicle. But the Israeli military said it had prevented an attack “at a very advanced stage of planning” that involved infiltrating militants via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.