Israel strikes Northern Gaza Strip

Israeli aircraft attacked Palestinian rocket launchers in the Gaza Strip today, the army said, as Israel persisted in its two-week operation meant to stop the crude projectiles.

The Israeli strikes have killed more than 50 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of them militants.

Two Israelis have been killed in the barrages of more than 270 rockets and thousands of Israelis have fled the frequently targeted southern town of Sderot.

In today’s violence, two rockets were fired at southern Israel, causing no injuries. Israel responded with two airstrikes. There were no reports of injuries.

“We will actively pursue and hit these rocket launchers as well as those who operate them. There will be no letting up and we are quite determined to see this through and protect our citizens,” said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

The Islamic Jihad militant group said two Palestinians were slightly injured in an Israeli artillery strike on the northern Gazan town of Beit Hanoun, but the army denied artillery operated in the area.

Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the firing of the rockets.

Late yesterday, a Palestinian rocket hit a house and power lines in Sderot, briefly plunging several neighbourhoods into darkness but causing no casualties, Israeli media reported.

Israel yesterday resolved to keep striking Gaza Strip rocket squads firing on Israeli border towns, and said it wasn’t negotiating a truce with radical groups.

The supreme leader of the Hamas militant group, which has been behind the latest surge in rocket attacks, vowed that attacks on Israel would continue, too.

Hamas, the senior partner in the Palestinian government, has launched most of the rockets since violence flared up in mid-May.Two members of a Hamas rocket squad were killed in an Israeli air attack on northern Gaza before dawn yesterday.

Israel’s Security Cabinet met to assess the situation, and concluded that Israel’s two-week-old military campaign has been effective in “relatively” reducing rocket fire, Olmert’s office said.

In mid-May, at the height of the latest round of rocket barrages, about 38 projectiles were fired in a single day, compared with two on Tuesday, the military said.