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Israel launches missile strikes in Gaza

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 September 2005, 09:33 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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