Two dead, two wounded in Israeli raids on Gaza Strip

Aug 24, 2011, 19:07 GMT

Tel Aviv/Gaza City - A fragile ceasefire between Gaza militias and Israel tottered precariously Wednesday, after Israeli air raids killed two Palestinian militants, and wounded two others, following 6 rocket attacks aimed at the Jewish state.

The most recent fatality was an Islamic Jihad operative, killed in Gaza City Wednesday night in an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian medical officials said. The raid came after several rockets fired from the Strip hit southern Israel.

An Israeli military statement said aircraft had targeted the squad which had fired rockets a few minutes previously.

Earlier, before dawn, an Israeli air raid killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant.

By about 1800 GMT, Israel had carried out two air raids, and Palestinians had launched around 6 rockets, four of them in the evening hours.

Palestinian witnesses in the Strip also reported that Israeli artillery was shelling fields, but a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said Israeli tanks had opened fire an abandoned rocket launcher, with the intention of destroying it.

Palestinians and the Israeli military identified the pre-dawn fatality as Zadi Ismail Asmar. A statement from the Israeli military said Asmar was involved in weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip, and had also operated with militants who tried to carry out attacks on Israel's border with the Sinai peninsula.

The Islamic Jihad vowed to revenge itself on Israel for Asmar's death.

Shortly afterwards, two rockets fired from the Strip landed in Israeli territory and an Israel Air Force airstrike targeted the rocket launching squads, who, the military said, were in two separate locations.

Palestinian medical services reported that two people were injured.

Following the airstrikes, Israeli authorities warned residents living near the Gaza border not to venture more than 15 seconds from rooms reinforced against rocket attacks.

Israel's Homefront Command also canceled a music festival scheduled to take place in the city of Ashkelon, located about 14 kilometres north of the Strip, and soccer games, which had been postponed on Saturday, at the height of the violence, were put off again.

The nominal ceasefire between Israel and the militants groups has been in place since Monday afternoon, but began unraveling after several hours, when several rockets hit Israel.

Israel had said, at the time the Gaza militias announced the halt in rocket attacks, that it would monitor the situation, and react accordingly.

The latest round of clashes broke out Thursday after militants crossed into Israel through the Sinai peninsula and shot at vehicles near the Israeli port city of Eilat.

Israeli responded with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which prompted the militant groups to launch rockets at southern Israel.

By the time the militant groups called a halt to the strikes Monday afternoon, they had launched almost 150 rockets, grenades and mortars at Israel, whose air force has flown 30 sorties against the Gaza Strip.

Including the original attacks, nine people have died in Israel and about 50 have been wounded. Sixteen Palestinians were reported to have been killed, and more than 50 injured.

Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group than Hamas, has been blamed by Israel for breaking ceasefires earlier this year.