11 killed in further Israeli airstrikes

Israeli planes pounded Hamas targets early today, bringing the toll in the past 24 hours of raids to 11 Palestinians killed and dozens wounded.

Hamas continued to fire rockets into southern Israel today, with three falling in the town of Sderot. Paramedics said three people were slightly injured by shrapnel and others treated for shock.

In one of today's strikes, Israeli aircraft fired missiles east of Gaza City, killing five Palestinians, at least three of them Hamas militants, and wounding six people, Hamas and local doctors said.

The military said the target was a Hamas headquarters building. Two other strikes followed, but there was no word of any casualties, the Palestinian doctors said.

The army said it struck at a squad which fired rockets into Israel.

Those strikes, a series of Israeli air attacks yesterday, and the movement of tanks a few hundred yards into the northern Gaza Strip, followed days of Hamas rocket barrages into Israel.

Street fighting between the Palestinian factions that has gripped Gaza since the weekend calmed under a truce agreement, but clashes yesterday still killed at least four people - a day after 22 died in the worst battles during a year of factional bloodshed.

The two sides exchanged bursts of automatic weapons fire around the Islamic University in central Gaza city today, and one person was wounded.

There was no sign of any Israeli military build-up that would indicate plans for a serious intervention into chaotic Gaza, though a few tanks and soldiers moved just across the Gaza border. Israel's government said its attacks were intended solely to discourage rocket attacks on southern Israel.

"Israel will take every defensive measure to stop these rocket attacks. We will defend our citizens against the rockets, against the weapons, against the Iranian-backed Hamas who are attacking Israel," government spokeswoman Miri Eisen said.

Analysts said Israeli policy makers were likely trying to walk a narrow line to avoid uniting Palestinian factions into a common front against Israel but Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a retired general, said Israel could not stand idly by while Palestinian rockets continued to fall.

"We have to show them one thing, that the moment you fire, we shall return fire," he told Israel Radio.

Hamas websites, radio and TV carried accusations that forces loyal to Abbas were working with Israel - a charge dismissed as "absurd" by a Fatah spokesman.

Although Israel said it was not taking sides, the airstrikes did make it harder for Hamas gunmen to move around and that could help Fatah's fighters, who appeared to have been outfought in the latest round of battles.