GAZA CITY, July 9: Israel pounded Gaza with fresh air strikes on Sunday as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed the massive operation will go on, despite so far failing to win the release of a soldier seized two weeks ago.

Forty-one Palestinians and an Israeli soldier have been killed since Israel launched its operation last Wednesday, pouring tanks and troops into the Gaza Strip and moving into land evacuated in September after a 38-year occupation.

On Sunday afternoon, one bystander was killed and seven Palestinians wounded when an Israeli aircraft fired two rockets at a car carrying three members of the armed wing of the ruling Hamas party, near the town of Rafah.

Despite the mounting death toll, Israel has rejected a call by Hamas premier Ismail Haniya for a mutual ceasefire, vowing no let-up until Palestinian rocket attacks cease and the teenage soldier is returned safe and sound.

“This is a war which cannot be given a timetable,” Olmert told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting. “We will continue managing this crisis with cool and patience... We cannot sit and not react to the Qassam rocket fire.”

Defence Minister Amir Peretz conceded during the meeting that “so far there has been no success, but we require patience and restraint”.

Palestinian militants fired two rockets into Israel’s southern desert town of Sderot, where Peretz lives, lightly wounding one man.

The armed wing of Hamas – one of three groups behind the June 25 attack on an army outpost in which Shalit was captured and two other soldiers killed – claimed four rocket attacks.

Hamas, which has seen its government offices struck by Israeli missiles in air strikes since Shalit was captured, has warned that Israel’s military assault is complicating the fate of the corporal, who it said was being well looked-after.

Israel, however, has vowed to use everything in its power to increase pressure on the Hamas-led government to free the 19-year-old and stop rocket attacks that have sowed panic among Israelis living near Gaza.

The commander of the southern region, General Yoav Galant, insisted on Saturday that “Operation Summer Rain” would deter Palestinian militants.

“They will think twice before launching attacks when they see in a week, a month or two months from now that hundreds of terrorists have been killed.”

In total, militants have fired 30 makeshift rockets towards Israel since the army began a vast operation in the northern Gaza Strip late Wednesday.—AFP