May 26, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 09, 1428

GAZA CITY, May 25: Warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a ninth day on Friday killing two militants as rocket fire continued to strike Israel despite a call from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for a truce.

Two members of the military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement were killed in a missile strike on their vehicle in an eastern sector of Gaza City, Palestinian medical sources said.

A third militant showed no sign of brain activity but doctors at the city's Shifa Hospital said they had not pronounced him dead.

The Israeli army would only confirm “an aerial attack against a vehicle transporting terrorists in Shujaiya district.” The air strike followed renewed rocket fire -- claimed by Hamas -- against the southern Israeli town of Sderot, in which three civilians were wounded. Police said the rocket slammed into the courtyard of a home.

Four Palestinians, including a child, were wounded in an earlier Israeli air raid against a post south of Gaza City used by the paramilitary Executive Force loyal to Hamas, the senior partner in the governing Palestinian coalition, medical sources said.In all, Israeli aircraft launched seven sorties overnight, most of them against Hamas targets.

The Palestinians said one raid hit a small guardhouse near the home of prime minister Ismail Haniya in the Shati refugee camp. The Israeli military denied his house had been the target.

Israel warned Hamas, of which Haniya is a prominent member, that none of its leaders was immune from attack after a rocket claimed by its militants killed an Israeli woman on Monday.

Other targets pinpointed by Israel included buildings operated by the Executive Force, a money-changing office and a suspected weapons workshop.

The military said it attacked two Hamas posts in Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Yunis, three buildings operated by Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip and a business “involved in transferring funds to terror organisations”.

A “weapons-manufacturing facility” used by Hamas's smaller rival Islamic Jihad, which has claimed most of the attacks on Israel in the past two years, was also hit in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, the military said.

Israel security sources said militants tried to fire 25 makeshift rockets over the past 24 hours, 13 of which hit Israel, and added that two mortar rounds caused damage near the Erez crossing separating Israel from Gaza.

The violence came a day after the beleaguered Palestinian president urged militants in Gaza to hold their fire and called for a truce with Israel.

“We don't need these futile firings of rockets and they have to cease so that we can reach a reciprocal truce with the Israelis in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Abbas said after meeting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

The Palestinian observer to the United Nations also lobbied for a call for a cessation of hostilities and the dispatch of UN truce monitors to the area.

Ryad Mansour said the proposal had the general support of non-aligned nations as well as the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

Air raids have killed 13 Palestinian civilians and 27 militants, but have failed to halt the rocket bombardment, with some 140 slamming into Israel over the past week and a half, killing the woman and wounding 19 people.

The United States has voiced concern, with State Department spokesman Tom Casey saying the detentions “raise particular concerns.” The White House urged both sides to spare “innocents” from attacks but said it expected Israel would defend itself from rocket fire by Hamas.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter warned that sooner or later Israel would have to launch a major ground offensive against Gaza to halt the rockets.—AFP