GAZA CITY, Feb 5: Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed nine Palestinians on Tuesday as Israel went on high alert a day after the first suicide bombing by Palestinian militants in a year.

An Israeli air raid hit a police station near the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis hours after an early morning incursion by Israeli soldiers in the nearby border town of Rafah left two Hamas men dead.

Medics said seven militants from the Islamist movement were killed in the late afternoon air strike and another two were wounded.

“The men were in afternoon prayers inside the police station when the missile struck,” said a security official for Hamas.

An Israeli army spokesman said the attack targeted a Hamas military position “in response to the Qassam (rocket) launchings that hit (the southern Israeli town of) Sderot this morning.” Shortly after the strike, Hamas militants fired another four rockets at the town, wounding two Israelis, as the movement vowed to avenge Tuesday’s strikes.

“This blood will not be shed in vain; this crime will not go unanswered and the Israeli occupation will pay a heavy price,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP shortly after the air strike.

Following the air strike, Hamas’s armed wing claimed full responsibility for the Dimona attack, the first time it has claimed a suicide bombing since August 2004.

According to a Hamas statement, the two bombers, Mohammed al-Hirbawi and Shadi al-Zaghair, came from the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

“Hamas has never announced that it has stopped or will stop any form of resistance, including martyrdom operations,” Abu Zuhri said. “The Palestinian people have the right to use all means to defend themselves.” The attack was previously claimed by three groups, including Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. It is loosely linked to the Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, who condemned the attack.

But the army appears to have already been tracking the Hamas cell, having arrested several male relatives of Hirbawi and Zaghair on Monday.

Since the 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising 6,120 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.

Bertie Ohayon, a senior Israeli police officer, told public radio earlier Tuesday: “Our forces have been placed on a heightened state of alert as we fear a wave of terrorist attacks after Monday’s attack in Dimona.” The bombing came after a nearly two-week breach of the Gaza-Egypt border.

That had raised fears in Israel that Gaza militants could have entered Israel through its porous 250-kilometre (150-mile) long frontier with Egypt.

As Cairo on Tuesday urged Hamas to allow European Union observers to return to the Rafah crossing so that it could be legally reopened, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said his country would not allow its border to be breached again.

The border barrier was blown open by militants on January 23 in a bid to break a punishing Israeli blockade on the impoverished territory. The barrier was resealed by Egyptian and Hamas forces on Sunday.—AFP