JERUSALEM, Feb 1: Israel vowed to strike back at Hamas on Sunday after renewed rocket fire from the group’s Gaza stronghold two weeks after the end of a bloody war in the battered Palestinian territory.

“We’ve said that if there is rocket fire against the south of the country, there will be a severe and disproportionate Israeli response,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at a cabinet meeting.

Israel --- which goes to the polls on February 10 --- has been hit by several rockets since a January 18 ceasefire brought an end to its 22-day war on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

“We will act according to new rules that will guarantee that we are not dragged into an incessant tit-for-tat war that will not allow normal life in the south of the country,” Mr Olmert said.

“The situation... in recent days has increased in a manner that does not allow Israel not to retaliate in order to make sure that our position... is understood by those involved in the fire.

“The response will come at the time, the place and the manner that we choose.”

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said that “Hamas was given a very serious blow and if necessary it will be given another blow.”

A mortar round fired into southern Israel on Sunday by Palestinian militants slightly injured two people, the Israeli army said.

Earlier in the day four rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel within the space of a few hours.

Hamas slammed the Israeli threats as a “campaign stunt” before the election. “This is an attempt... to destroy the Egyptian efforts to improve the calm,” Taher Al-Nunu said in a statement in Gaza.

In the aftermath of the Gaza war, the issue of security has jumped to the forefront of the Israeli election campaign.

The Hamas spokesman did not say whether the Islamists who ruled Gaza were behind the rocket fire, but called on “all groups to respect the national decision concerning the ground situation in Gaza”.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group loosely linked to President Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for firing two projectiles on Sunday.

In all, at least seven rockets had been fired since mutual ceasefires by Israel and Hamas on January 18 ended Israel’s massive three-week onslaught on the territory that left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead. Thirteen Israelis were killed.

Egypt has been leading international efforts to consolidate the ceasefires into a lasting truce, and Mr Abbas is to head to Cairo for talks on the situation. Hamas officials are also due in the Egyptian capital.---AFP