Provocative attack: An Israeli police officer carries the remains of a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza Strip after it hit near Ofakiam, southern Israel. Source: AP
AN Israel air raid has killed a militant and wounded two other Palestinians in Gaza, taking the toll to 18 since an attack on an Israeli school bus.
The dead man, a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, was killed in eastern Gaza City on Saturday evening, in the same attack that left the two others wounded, a medic said, adding that Israeli tanks wounded another Palestinian in the north of the strip.An Israeli military spokesman confirmed an air strike was carried out on the Gaza Strip, saying it was aimed at militants shooting rockets.
On Saturday morning, an Israeli tank round killed a Palestinian and wounded a second in an eastern neighbourhood of Gaza City, medics said, without specifying whether the casualties were militants or civilians.
The deaths take to 18 the number of Palestinians killed since Gaza militants fired an anti-tank round at an Israeli school bus near kibbutz Nahal Oz, just across the border from Gaza, on Thursday.
Militants have also fired dozens of mortars or rockets into Israel, which has hit back in its deadliest strikes since a devastating 22-day conflict ended in January 2009.
The Israeli raids since Thursday have killed a 10-year-old boy, one policeman and at least six militants of the Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip.
The death toll since Israel launched its retaliation for an attack on a school bus that critically wounded a teen-ager on Thursday climbed to 19 Palestinian militants and civilians.
With Egypt and the United Nations reportedly trying to achieve a ceasefire, militants fired a new volley of rockets at southern Israel, causing no casualties but spreading panic.
Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Sa'ar said Israel would keep responding to the attacks from Gaza, where it maintains tight controls over the entry and exit of people and goods. Israel said some 40 rockets had been fired from Gaza Saturday.
"We will not permit sporadic shootings or the disruption of life inside Israel," Sa'ar told Israel Radio. "We will continue ... to implement a principle of defending our citizens."
Before dawn, Israeli forces killed a local Hamas commander in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, bordering Egypt, as well as two bodyguards, in an air strike on his vehicle, medics said.
Israel blamed the commander for a rocket strike on the city of Eilat launched from the Sinai Peninsula some months ago.
Another air strike at daybreak killed a further militant.
As dusk fell, Israeli air strikes on two targets near Gaza City killed one militant and wounded three others, Palestinian medics said.
Abu Ubaida, a masked spokesman for the armed wing of the Hamas Islamist movement that controls Gaza, defiantly told a news conference that his group had launched at least 60 mortars and rockets since Friday, and would reject any ceasefire.
"There is no room to talk about calm between us," Ubaida said. "The blood of our people is very dear and cannot be in vain."
ARAB LEAGUE MEETING
Hamas had threatened earlier to widen the range of its rocket fire unless Israel stopped its bombing raids, and demanded an Arab League meeting on the fighting, which Palestinian officials said would convene in Cairo Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met senior officials after the Jewish sabbath Saturday evening.
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