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Israeli planes strike Gaza Strip
13/03/2008 09:20 - (SA)
Jerusalem - Israeli planes on Thursday hit targets in the northern Gaza Strip effectively ending a lull in the violence since March 8, the Israeli armed forces announced.
Israel's attack came after a dozen rockets were fired towards southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, with the projectiles causing no harm.
"The Israeli air force raid targeted a rocket launch that was ready to fire in the Beit Hanun area in the northern Gaza Strip," an Israeli army spokesperson told AFP.
"Twelve rockets were fired from Gaza towards southern Israel overnight," he added. "Two of the rockets exploded at Sderot, damaging a building, but without injuring anybody."
Palestinian hospital officials said no one was hurt in the Beit Hanoun air raid.
Truce
Israel and the Palestinians had respected a tacit truce since March 8 which led to a drop in violence.
Israeli undercover special forces on Wednesday killed four Palestinian militants, including two senior leaders of the radical Islamic Jihad, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
The West Bank dead included Mohammed Shahada, 48, a top leader in the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, and Ahmed al-Balbul, 48, a senior official in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely tied to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party, Palestinian security officials said.
The other two men were identified as Imad al-Kamel and Eissa Marzuk, both militants in Islamic Jihad.
At least 351 people, most of them Gaza militants, have been killed since Israel and the Palestinians formally relaunched peace talks at a US conference in late November, according to an AFP count.
Wednesday's deaths also brought to 6 314 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.
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