Israel launches missile strikes in Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel launched missile strikes that
knocked out power to thousands of Palestinians in Gaza on
Wednesday as it pressed an offensive against cross-border
rocket fire two weeks after its withdrawal from the territory.

No rocket launchings were reported during the day after a
pledge by militant groups to halt attacks condemned by the
Palestinian Authority (PA) as harming the national interest.

The air raids took place just hours after Israel’s army
fired artillery shells into the Gaza Strip for the first time
since the 1967 Middle East war, further aggravating tension on
the fifth anniversary of a Palestinian uprising.

Renewed violence has battered hopes that Israel’s troop
pullout from Gaza, completed on September 12 under Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for “disengaging” from conflict
with the Palestinians, would improve chances for peace.

With little prospect for progress soon along a U.S.-backed
peace “road map,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said
a meeting set for October 2 between Sharon and President
Mahmoud Abbas had been postponed. He gave no new date for the
summit.

However, in Washington, a U.S. official said Abbas and
President George W. Bush would meet in the U.S. capital on
October 20 to discuss “the way forward” following the Gaza
withdrawal.

Sharon, locked in a race with rival Benjamin Netanyahu for
leadership of the right-wing Likud party, has hit back hard
against militants firing rockets into Israel.

He wants to counter hardliners’ accusations that he has
damaged Israel’s security by pulling out of Gaza after 38 years
of occupation. His tough response may have given him a boost
with polls showing him taking a commanding lead over Netanyahu.

Before dawn, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at four
militant targets in and around Gaza City, destroying the
offices of a leading Fatah militant and two other militant
groups, Israeli military sources and Palestinian witnesses
said.

They said a fifth missile fired later destroyed a bridge in
northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun.

In separate strikes, Israeli aircraft attacked open fields
in northern Gaza “for deterrent purposes,” an Israeli military
source said. Israel Radio described the action as being aimed
against rocket launchers.

NO CASUALTIES

Residents of Beit Hanoun told Reuters they wanted militants
to stop firing rockets into Israel so that rebuilding after
numerous Israeli ground raids in the past five years of
violence could begin.

Militant groups, including Hamas and the less influential
Islamic Jihad, have said they were halting the rocket attacks
to avoid large-scale Israeli retaliation.

No casualties were reported after the air strikes, which
destroyed two major electrical generators and plunged Gaza City
and much of the northern strip into darkness for hours.

The army said it had not deliberately targeted electricity
infrastructure. After emergency repairs, at least 35,000 people
remained without power after daybreak.

Late on Tuesday, Israeli artillery fired on what the army
said were rocket launching sites in northern Gaza after a
rocket landed in a street in a town in southern Israel. There
were no further rocket attacks by late afternoon on Wednesday.

“We condemn the Israeli military escalation,” Erekat said.

In the occupied West Bank, a U.S. general helping the
Palestinian Authority reform its security services called on
the PA to carry out its road map obligation “to dismantle the
infrastructure of terror” and impose law and order.

“If (mortar and rocket fire) were to stop, I would say that
the very likely result would be Israeli stoppage of their
activity as well,” Lieutenant-General William Ward told
reporters in the town of Jericho.

Israeli troops carried out raids overnight in the West
Bank, arresting 24 suspected militants.

That followed Tuesday’s release of a videotape by Hamas, a
group bent on Israel’s destruction, claiming responsibility for
the kidnapping and killing of an Israeli man.

(Additional reporting by Muin Shadid in Tulkarm, Naim
Sweilem in Qalqilya and Cynthia Johnston in Jericho)