Israel pounds Gaza militants after rocket death
GAZA CITY, Feb 28, 2008 (AFP) — Israel pounded militants in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip with deadly strikes on Thursday as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to make the Islamists pay a heavy price for rocket attacks.
Israeli forces killed five gunmen in Gaza and two in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, while a 12-year-old boy in Gaza died of injuries sustained in a raid the previous day, medics and security sources said.
Over the past 24 hours, 19 Palestinians and one Israeli have died as a result of escalating bloodshed, all but three of them in and around Gaza, where Israel has imposed a punishing blockade on the impoverished territory.
Those killed have included a six-month-old baby in Gaza -- one of six civilians killed in the territory -- and a man in southern Israel who became the first Israeli victim of a Gaza rocket attack in nine months.
Speaking after talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Tokyo, Olmert vowed to make Hamas pay for the rocket attacks despite US concerns about civilians in Gaza, one of the world's most densely-populated places with a population of 1.5 million.
"We will make the terrorists pay a very heavy price," Olmert told reporters. "We are at the height of this battle and we will pursue it until the danger threatening residents in the south ends."
Rice said she told Olmert that she supported his determination to end the rocket attacks, adding: "The issue is that the rocket attacks need to stop."
She is due to visit the Middle East next week as part of Washington's efforts to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that was relaunched in late November but has made little progress since.
"There needs to be due concern for the innocent people and the humanitarian situation in Gaza," Rice said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees "strongly condemned" the killing of the baby and called on Israelis "to abide by international law and exercise maximum restraint, and not to endanger civilians," spokesman Christopher Gunness told AFP.
Ismail Haniya, the prime minister in the dismissed Hamas-led government, blasted the "successive crimes committed by the Zionist occupation" and called Arab countries to "stop their regrettable silence and act with urgency to stop the aggression."
The Western-backed Palestinian government based in Ramallah also denounced "abominable Israeli crimes" in Gaza, which has been ruled by the rival Hamas since it routed forces loyal to president Mahmud Abbas in June.
Amid the spike in violence, most Hamas buildings were emptied on Thursday and militants told not to travel in groups or use their mobile phones to avoid being targeted by the Israeli military.
The violence around Gaza flared early on Wednesday when an Israeli strike killed five Hamas militants in the southern town of Khan Yunis.
In retaliation, the Islamists launched a volley of rockets into southern Israel, killing a man at a university on the outskirts of the town of Sderot.
He became the first Israeli since May killed by a rocket that Gaza militants fire on nearly a daily basis.
At least 219 people, most of them Gaza militants, have been killed since the revival of peace talks, according to an AFP tally.
On Thursday, the sraeli air strikes killed five gunmen in Gaza and two militans in the northern West Bank town of Nablus, medics and security sources said.
Five rockets and five mortars fired by Gaza militants landed in Israel, lightly wounding one person, the army said.
The bloodshed comes as US President George W. Bush's administration steps up its diplomacy in the Middle East in hope of making progress before he leaves office in January.
Rice -- who will visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and Belgium from March 3 to 7 -- said she still saw a "remarkable commitment" by Olmert and Abbas.
In his talks in Japan -- a major donor to the Palestinians -- Olmert pledged progress in the peace process, but cast doubt on whether the goal of striking a deal by the end of 2008 was realistic.
