April 21, 2008	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1429

GAZA CITY, April 20: Israeli forces carried out deadly air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, a day after Hamas militants detonated explosives-laden vehicles at a border crossing, wounding 13 soldiers.

Overnight air raids killed six Palestinian fighters, all members of Hamas, the Islamist movement that violently seized Gaza last year and that refuses to recognise Israel’s right to exist.

The air attacks began just hours after militants detonated two booby-trapped vehicles disguised as Israeli military jeeps at the Kerem Shalom border crossing used to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

Thirteen Israeli soldiers were wounded in Saturday’s attack, which Israeli Major General Yoav Galant described as the “most ambitious launched against our troops” since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.

The jeeps and an armoured vehicle approached the border under the cover of fog and mortar fire. The Israeli army said it foiled an attempt to detonate the third vehicle and killed four “terrorists” who were in it.

A fourth booby-trapped vehicle approached the security fence near Kibbutz Nirim, just north of Kerem Shalom, but troops spotted it and blew it up before it could cause any harm, the army said.

The operation, which was claimed by Hamas, was the fifth time in 10 days that militants had attacked crossings with Israel.

On April 9, two Israeli civilians were killed when Palestinian militants raided the Nahal Oz crossing that supplies virtually all of Gaza’s fuel.

“The terrorists planned to execute a wider attack,” the army said, adding they may have intended to kidnap soldiers.

“Hamas is exploiting the compassion and generosity of the State of Israel by targeting humanitarian crossings. This is a deliberate attack against aiding the Palestinian population,” Galant said. The army says about 200 trucks of humanitarian aid go through the Kerem Shalom crossing every week.

Humanitarian agencies say the aid is critical in the impoverished Palestinian territory which they say is teetering on the brink of collapse in part because of a tight embargo.—AFP