Israel hits Palestinian security compound

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli missiles hit a Palestinian
security compound in Gaza on Tuesday, the first such air strike
in two years, and Israeli shells killed a Palestinian in the
north of the strip after rocket attacks on the Jewish state.

The missile attack in Gaza City wounded a policeman. Hamas
said Israel was trying to send a message in response to the
Islamic group’s victory in January parliamentary elections.

Israel said it was responding to Palestinian cross-border
rocket attacks.

Israel’s YNet Web site said one of about a dozen
projectiles fired from Gaza landed in an industrial area on the
outskirts of the Israeli coastal town of Ashkelon, narrowly
missing a storage area for flammable materials.

The Israeli military said it had carried out two separate
air attacks, one on an open field in northern Gaza from where
militants fire rockets, and the other on an “open, unpopulated
space” in Gaza City.

Israel launched the strikes shortly after interim Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert announced his centrist Kadima Party
expected center-left Labor to be its senior partner in a
coalition government being formed after elections last week.

In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiyeh, separate Israeli
fire killed at least one person and wounded about seven others,
including several in a house, Palestinian security officials
said. One of those wounded in the house was a four-month-old
girl, Reuters television pictures showed.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said artillery fire targeted
rocket launching sites.

“There was no intent to hit any homes and we have no
knowledge that we struck any,” she said.

Earlier, Palestinian witnesses said two missiles fired from
the air struck a training base used by Palestinian security
forces in Gaza City. The office of President Mahmoud Abbas is
nearby, although he was not there at the time.

“There is no justification for these operations. We do not
understand them,” Abbas told reporters in the West Bank city of
Ramallah. “We have appealed to the United Nations, Russia, the
EU (European Union) and our Arab brothers, telling them that
these actions will severely complicate civil life.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, also commenting on the air
strike, said: “The continuation of aggression will only bring
more destruction and death on the enemy.”

Militants regularly fire rockets from Gaza, which Israel
withdrew from last year after 38 years of occupation. But the
makeshift missiles rarely cause casualties nor are they
launched from Gaza City because they do not have sufficient
range.

COALITION TAKING SHAPE

Olmert had vowed an “iron” response to Palestinian militant
attacks in the lead up to Israel’s March 28 elections.

With Labor leader Amir Peretz at his side on Tuesday, he
said he wanted to form a government soon. Formal coalition
talks are expected to begin when President Moshe Katsav gives
his approval, possibly as soon as Wednesday.

Kadima won the most seats, but fewer than expected, on its
plans to lay down Israel’s final borders with or without
Palestinian agreement. It secured 29 seats in the 120-member
parliament. Labor came second with 19.

Once endorsed by Katsav, Olmert would have 42 days to form
a government. Several smaller parties are expected to join.

Olmert’s plan is to trace a border along a barrier Israel
is building in the West Bank, where 240,000 Israelis live among
2.4 million Palestinians. Israel would keep major settlement
blocs.

Palestinians condemn such a move, saying it would annex
land and deny them the viable state they seek in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip, both captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East
war.

Seeking to break from attempts by Israel and the United
States to isolate the new Palestinian government, Foreign
Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar announced plans on Tuesday to visit
China and other Asian countries next month.

Zahar, a senior Hamas figure, was speaking after meeting a
senior Chinese diplomat in Gaza. He did not say which other
countries in Asia he planned to visit.

Israel regards Hamas, which advocates its destruction, as a
terrorist organization.

(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Jeffrey
Heller in Jerusalem)