USEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, March 7 — Israeli armored forces raided the outskirts of two neighboring refugee camps in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, igniting a gun-and-grenade battle that lasted for hours and left 14 Palestinians dead.

At least 10 of the dead were gunmen, but Palestinians said 3 were unarmed youths. They included a 9-year-old boy who had told his mother he was going to school but apparently went to watch the fighting instead. No Israelis were wounded.

It was the deadliest single Israeli raid in more than a year. Witnesses and the army described a bedlam of gunfire and explosions of grenades and firebombs after Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships moved on the camps, and mosque loudspeakers summoned gunmen to jihad.

After dawn, hundreds of children and teenagers, some of them flinging stones from improvised slings, swarmed the uncertain edges of the congested battlefield, a mix of orange orchards in fragrant bloom and fetid, sandy camp lanes.

Eighty-three people were injured, including 40 under the age of 18, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Israeli Army said soldiers were searching for weapons and for militants responsible for firing mortar bombs and antitank missiles at nearby Jewish settlements. The Israeli forces eventually withdrew under what the army described as extraordinarily heavy Palestinian fire, including antitank missiles, mortar bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They did not make any arrests or seize any weapons.

The raid came a day after a brazen suicidal Palestinian assault on an Israeli-controlled boundary crossing from Gaza. That attack on Saturday killed the four assailants and two Palestinian policemen without harming any Israelis. It suggested a new daring by militants here as the governing Palestinian Authority crumbles and the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, speaks of an eventual, unilateral withdrawal from most or all of the Gaza Strip.

Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Mr. Sharon, said of the raid on Sunday, "This is a signal to show that even though there are talks about disengagement, we are not going to let them use these camps to launch their attacks."

He said soldiers tried to avoid hurting civilians. He expressed regret for the deaths of the children but said: "The children flock to the gunmen. No doubt the gunmen are using them."

Palestinians accused Israel of staging the attack in hopes of drawing out and killing militants.

"I think the Israelis did this so that the militant people would come and confront them, and they could get them all at once," said Awad Quader, 27, a chicken farmer who lives near the center of where the fighting was.

In a statement, the Islamic militant group Hamas identified nine of the dead as members of its violent wing. Two were known to be particularly active in firing mortar bombs and rockets at Israeli targets.

Nuseirat and the neighboring Bureij camp held a ritual on Sunday that is grimly familiar to the residents. Middle-aged and elderly men gathered to sit quietly on plastic chairs outside the homes of the dead, women gathered to sit on the floors inside, and young men and boys lofted the bodies through the streets in roiling crowds, shouting that God is great.

The body of Mahmoud Younis, 9, his face rigid and yellow, was wrapped in a bright green Hamas flag as it was carried to the low door of his cinder-block home. One man repeatedly fired a silver pistol into the air outside as the body was borne in and then carried away for burial.

Mahmoud's mother, Jamila Younis, 35, said her son had gotten up at 6, put on his school uniform and said he wanted to go to class despite the fighting. "Instead of going to school, I think he and his friends went to the place where there was the incursion," she said, her eyes red. "His friends came and said, `Your son died.' He got a bullet in the head and also in his foot."

Outside the Younis home were more than a dozen members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group connected to the mainstream Fatah faction. They wore black hoods with black or green mesh over their eyes. Some had rocket-propelled grenades strapped to their waists along with the Kalashnikov rifles in their hands.

Their leader, a man of 40 who did not wear a hood and gave the nom de guerre Abu Jandal, said Mr. Sharon was confused about his own intentions but added, "The pressure of resistance from here will force him to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank."

He said the Israeli raid would recruit more militants for him. "All these young kids are asking to be martyrs," he said, gesturing at dozens of boys who crowded around him and his gunmen. "They want to be bombs."

Judging by their route of withdrawal, the Israeli forces began their raid from just north of here at the Israeli settlement of Netzarim. Palestinian witnesses said that, at the start of the raid, soldiers seized at least two tall buildings and set up sniper posts.

The army said soldiers were seeking to track down a militant cell centered at the Bureij camp that has fired dozens of mortar bombs during the past two months at Netzarim and the settlement of Kfar Darom, south of here. Those attacks have not caused injuries, but an army spokesman said they could have caused great harm.

The Israeli Army frequently enters Palestinian cities in the West Bank in what it says are searches for wanted men, and gunmen now seldom resist those raids. But in Gaza, militants continue to fight back. An Israeli raid into Gaza City on Feb. 11 left 12 Palestinians dead, and another on Jan. 28 left 8 dead. In both cases, most of the dead were gunmen.

The army said the fight here was unusual in that the Palestinians responded so quickly, and with considerable firepower.

The Palestinian fire actually intensified during the withdrawal, the army said. At least one armored vehicle was partly disabled and had to be rescued. Some children climbed onto halted armored vehicles, the army said.

After the Israelis withdrew at midmorning, a hole four feet deep and six feet across gaped in Salahadin Road between the camps, where militants had detonated a mine.