Israel pounds Gaza with series of air strikes

MIDDLE EAST: Israel pounded Gaza with a series of air strikes on Monday, hours after killing nine Palestinians in an assault on the home of a senior Hamas politician, and in a separate raid on a suspected rocket manufacturing facility.

Israel's cabinet decided on Sunday to ratchet up military measures in Gaza in response to an increase in rocket attacks on Israel in the past week, though stopping short of waging an all out offensive in the coastal territory its troops quit in 2005.

The latest Israeli air strike targeted the Zaitoun neighbourhood, an Islamic stronghold in Gaza City, shortly after an attack late on Sunday killed a man at what Palestinians said was a stone mason's workshop, and Israel called a rocket manufacturing plant.

Palestinian medics said a Hamas member had been shot and wounded from an Israeli aircraft while riding a bicycle early on Monday. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

In a second strike on Monday, a missile fired from an Israeli attack helicopter knocked out electricity for about 50,000 people in Nozeirat and a nearby refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said.

There were no casualties. Eight Palestinians died in an Israeli air raid on Sunday that punched out the porch of the home of prominent Gaza lawmaker Khalil al-Hayya of Hamas. Israel said it had targeted Hamas gunmen involved in rocket attacks, killing five.

That attack was the first time in many months Israel had struck at a key figure of the Islamist militant group that rose to power a year ago but has been shunned by the West for refusing to recognise the Jewish state. Hayya was not home and was unharmed by the raid which also wounded a dozen other people.

Hamas said two of those killed were gunmen and vowed "an earthquake" of a response against Israel, which had struck out at the home of a Hamas official for the first time in many months.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's top aide condemned Israel for the strike at Hayya's home which was Israel's deadliest in Gaza in about a year.

"This escalation will lead the Middle East to more violence and instability," the aide, Nabil Abu Rdainah, told Reuters.

The Israeli strikes had spurred Palestinians to put an end to a 10-day bout of factional warfare in Gaza between gunmen of Hamas and Abbas's rival Fatah movement, in which 49 Palestinians had been killed.

Hamas had started firing crude Qassam rockets at Israel at the height of the factional fighting, in a bid to shift the focus from its power struggle with Fatah that has threatened a fragile unity coalition forged by the two parties in March.

About a dozen Israelis have been wounded by the rockets in the past week, prompting panic and leading Israel to partly evacuate the hardest hit town of Sderot at the weekend.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday his security cabinet had decided to step up strikes against militant leaders involved in rocket attacks against southern Israel.

Ministers had resolved to "intensify operational steps...by striking at terrorist infrastructure and those who operate the Qassam attacks," Olmert told reporters, using Hamas's name for the makeshift rockets. Olmert said military operations would focus on the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants whom he accused of being responsible for an escalation in rocket firings in the past week.

"If these strong steps don't bring about calm, the cabinet will meet to weigh additional, more drastic steps," he added.

Gaza, Monday, Reuters