Israel Fires Missiles in Gaza

JERUSALEM â€”  Israel launched a series of missile strikes in the Gaza Strip early today after rockets fired by Palestinian militants killed an Israeli woman.

No casualties were reported from the strikes, which the Israeli military said were aimed at weapons labs belonging to the militant group Hamas. Witnesses said the targets appeared to include a pro-Hamas charity, a cemetery used by militants for staging rocket attacks and a car carrying several Hamas members.

The missile attacks -- four within an hour -- came days after the first Palestinian suicide bombing since February, an attack that killed five Israelis outside a mall and triggered Israeli incursions into West Bank towns in search of extremists.

The bombing, rocket attacks and missile strikes have frayed an informal cease-fire between armed Palestinian groups and Israeli forces, and cast a cloud over Israel’s preparations for clearing out Jewish settlers and troops from Gaza next month.

The missile strikes were apparently in response to a barrage of shelling Thursday by Hamas militants in Gaza. One rocket killed a young woman in the community of Netiv Haasara in Israel, the first such death in months.

Hours later, Israeli soldiers sealed off sections of a key highway in Gaza, cutting the seaside territory into three parts in a prelude to the airstrikes, which were launched shortly after midnight.

Missiles struck two buildings in the Khan Yunis refugee camp that the Israeli military said were being used as ammunition storage and weapons manufacturing depots.

However, witnesses said the intended target seemed to be a graveyard from which militants frequently launch rockets at a nearby block of Jewish settlements known as Gush Katif.

Helicopter gunships also fired on another weapons lab in central Gaza and on a Hamas office in northern Gaza, the military said.

Residents contradicted those accounts somewhat, saying that the strike in northern Gaza hit a Hamas-associated charitable foundation and that the raid in central Gaza hit a group of Hamas fighters in a car. The militants managed to scramble out of the vehicle before the missile struck, witnesses said.

The airstrikes reflected Israel’s growing displeasure with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom it accuses of failing to take strong action against militias such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the group behind Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the coastal Israeli city of Netanya.

“Israel has lost six people this past week to terror,� David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “If the PA does not take the necessary steps to end terror, Israel will.�

But a major, sustained Israeli air and ground offensive in Gaza is unlikely, because Sharon’s government and the military are reluctant to upset the fragile truce in the run-up to the Gaza pullout.

There was speculation that Thursday’s shelling by Hamas was partially rooted in internal Palestinian politics.

Abbas, whose authority is scoffed at by Hamas, was in Gaza overnight Thursday for meetings with Palestinian security officials, and analysts say that may have prompted the militants to launch attacks in defiance of the period of calm he helped broker.

Tension between the official security forces and Hamas boiled over today when Palestinian police fired on Hamas members returning from a rocket attack. Seven people, including at least four militants, were injured in the ensuing shootout, witnesses and Hamas said.

Special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City contributed to this report.