GAZA CITY, Jan 3: Nine Palestinians, including two women, were killed in Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medical sources said, in the latest blitz against the Hamas-ruled territory.

Israeli troops and tanks backed by combat helicopters were operating in the village of Bani Suheila near the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Israeli warplanes also carried out a series of four air strikes across Gaza in response to the firing for the first time in months of a rocket at the Israeli city of Ashkelon, the army said.

Nine people, including a mother and daughter and at least four militants, were killed in the Israeli attacks, while 48 people were wounded and several houses destroyed, witnesses and medics said.

Israel has carried out near-daily military strikes and incursions across what it considers a “hostile entity” in a bid to halt militant rocket fire since the Islamist movement Hamas seized control of Gaza in June.

The renewed violence comes shortly before US President George Bush is due in the region in a bid to rally recently revived Middle East peace talks.

In Gaza, two brothers, both members of the radical Islamic Jihad group, were killed in a raid on a house that also killed their mother and sister.

One member of the armed wing of Hamas was killed during gunbattles with Israeli troops.

Aircraft also destroyed two houses where militants were suspected to have been hiding and a third house was blown up by troops, witnesses added.

Two unidentified bodies were found in the rubble of one of the buildings, medics said, having previously put the number at three.

An army spokeswoman said ground forces were engaged in heavy exchanges of fire with Palestinian fighters who were hiding in houses, saying civilian casualties were caused because “they were letting militants into their homes.” Israeli jets destroyed the home in central Gaza of an Islamic Jihad militant who was killed in December, causing a massive explosion but no casualties, the spokeswoman said.

Warplanes also bombed a suspected Islamic Jihad warehouse in Gaza City as well as a building used by Hamas in the south of the territory. No casualties were reported in either of the strikes.

One Hamas militant was killed and three others wounded in a fourth air strike in east Gaza City shortly afterwards, medical sources said.

A member of the moderate Fatah movement who was detained by Hamas in an outpost near the southern town of Rafah was killed in an Israeli air strike on the site, witnesses said.

The army said the air raids came in response to rocket fire against southern Israel, shortly after militants fired a Grad-type 122mm rocket that struck the outskirts of Ashkelon, without causing casualties.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based militant movement led by Ahmed Jibril and which rarely operates in Gaza, said it fired the rocket.

At least 25 rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel on Thursday, including one that struck the back yard of a house in the hard-hit town of Sderot, the army said. No casualties were reported.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including six militants, in pre-dawn strikes in Gaza, an impoverished territory of about 1.4 million people. Israel has long been struggling to put an end to militant rocket fire from Gaza.

In September, the government declared the territory a “hostile entity,” paving the way for punitive cuts in fuel and power supplies to Gaza and raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.—AFP