A witness said two US-made Apache helicopters fired one rocket apiece at a building in Khan Yunis used by Palestinian police, who had evacuated the area before the strike.
The same witness said an F-16 warplane fired a rocket at another house nearby, destroying the three-story building. Hospital officials said five people were injured in the air raid, all of them civilians.
Israeli army radio said the three-storey building had been the home of a Palestinian suicide bomber from Hamas. Palestinian sources said only that the deceased owner had been a Hamas militant.
Witnesses said a man suspected of collaborating with Israel in a June 24 helicopter strike which killed six people, including three Hamas militants, was killed by relatives of the slain Islamists when police fled the Khan Yunis courtroom where he was being tried.
Meanwhile, Israel went on high security alert after police foiled two Palestinian attempts to penetrate Israel with explosives and renew deadly attacks which have died down in the past four weeks.
SHARON: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday gave the go-ahead for a new round of talks between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian officials, Sharon’s office said in a statement.
Sharon and Peres met to discuss the resumption of contacts, tentatively broached at a meeting with two newly appointed Palestinian ministers this week, a day after Peres postponed a planned meeting with a Palestinian delegation, amid what sources close to Sharon said was opposition from the premier.
SHOT DEAD: A Palestinian man was shot dead on Sunday as he tried to stab an Israeli soldier in an army jeep in the Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.—AFP