GAZA: Three Palestinians dead after further Israeli strikes in Gaza

Israel killed three Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Friday (August 4) as it launched a series of air strikes on militant targets that wounded four other people, witnesses and medics said. The fighting overnight was concentrated in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, close to where Palestinian gunmen on June 25 seized an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid. The raid and Palestinian rocket fire triggered a massive Israeli ground and air offensive which over the past five weeks has killed at least 163 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians. Medics and witnesses said two Palestinians were killed and another was wounded when a tank shell landed near a house in Rafah shortly after daybreak on Friday. An army spokeswoman said Israel had launched an air strike against two gunmen in the area. A Hamas militant was also killed on Friday in an Israeli air strike. Israeli ground forces swept into the Rafah area on Thursday (August 3) to destroy what the army called "terrorist infrastructure." Troops backed by armoured vehicles have since taken over a three to five km area, carried out house-to-house searches and destroyed greenhouses and chicken farms. Eleven people have been killed in the incursion since Thursday. Twelve have been detained. Israel has rejected demands by the armed wing of Hamas and the other groups to exchange Shalit for Palestinian prisoners. Israel's offensive has increased pressure on Hamas, which rose to power in March, and had been under a Western aid embargo to try to force it to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept peace deals. Two air raids elsewhere in Gaza on Friday destroyed houses owned by members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another militant group that calls for Israel's destruction and has been involved in suicide bomb attacks and rocket launches at Israel. An Israeli military spokeswoman said these air strikes had targeted weapons depots of both groups. Palestinian sources said they were private homes. People inside the buildings were given 20 minutes warning to leave. A three-day old baby also died on Friday after being dropped by her mother while fleeing advancing Israeli troops in her village near Rafah on Thursday.

ITN Source | August 4, 2006

Tags:. .vehicles. .terrorist. .targets. .targeted. .soldier