Israel Kills 6 in Strikes on Hamas

Israeli forces killed six Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with missile strikes and gunfire Friday, showing a willingness to resume targeted assassinations that had been largely on hold since February.

The airstrikes, carried out in daylight, were aimed at members of Hamas in retaliation against the militant group’s rocket and mortar attacks in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the death of a 22-year-old Israeli woman Thursday and more injuries Friday.

Hamas immediately vowed revenge, sparking fears of a return to the near-constant violence that engulfed the two sides before the main armed Palestinian groups agreed to an unofficial cease-fire with Israel in February.

The upsurge in attacks also raised concerns that next month’s scheduled evacuation of Jewish settlements and Israeli military posts in Gaza might be disrupted. Israel cited the pullout as one of the reasons for its offensive and blamed Palestinian officials for not clamping down on militants, who unleashed a suicide bombing and a barrage of rockets in the last few days.

“They failed the test,” Raanan Gissin, an advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said of the Palestinian Authority. “We said if this continues, we will have no other choice [but] to exercise our right of self-defense, which means we will use any military action to stop the fire. This situation is exacerbated because we are on the eve of disengagement” from Gaza.

Gissin insisted that the withdrawal would take place “under any circumstance” and that it was not yet too late for coordination with the Palestinian side on how it would be done.

Palestinian Authority officials said they had taken steps to rein in Hamas, at the risk of violent division among Palestinians, and criticized the Israeli “escalation” as counterproductive.

“The Palestinian Authority is trying to maintain the rule of law and order in Gaza and the unity of the Authority,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Friday. The Israeli strikes “will absolutely torpedo the Sharm el Sheik understandings,” he said, referring to the informal truce reached at a summit in Egypt.

Prospects for a smooth, collaborative Israeli evacuation of Gaza dimmed with the steady unraveling this week of the truce. Raids by the Israeli army and attacks by Islamic extremists have left at least six Israelis and eight Palestinians dead since Tuesday, one of the highest tolls in months.

To try to prevent the renewed strife from derailing the Gaza pullout, Washington announced that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would travel to the Middle East next week to urge restraint.

“All the parties need to make the maximum effort to see that this disengagement process is a success,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news conference in Washington on Friday.

The Israeli offensive Friday entailed 10 air raids within 24 hours, beginning under cover of darkness early in the morning with four missile strikes targeting what the Israeli army described as Hamas weapons labs and storage depots inside the Gaza Strip. No casualties were reported in those strikes.

But three additional attacks late Friday afternoon and early evening had human targets. Israel renounced what it calls “pinpointed killings” in February when Palestinian militants agreed to end hostilities, but said it reserved the right to go after “ticking bombs,” meaning anyone poised to execute an attack.

A military spokeswoman said four Hamas fighters killed in a preemptive airstrike on their van in densely populated Gaza City were senior weapons makers on their way to launch rockets and mortars at nearby Israeli towns and Jewish settlements. Twenty-four hours of heavy shelling that started Thursday -- including 22 rockets and 44 mortar rounds -- killed one Israeli woman, lightly wounded two others, destroyed cars and homes, and set a kindergarten ablaze.

A second operation hit two “wanted terrorists” in Salfit, a West Bank town outside the large Jewish settlement of Ariel, the spokeswoman said. One Hamas operative was killed by a missile inside the cave where he was hiding and another man who escaped from the airstrike subsequently died in a shootout, she said.

It was unclear whether the two were considered imminent threats. But Gissin indicated that Israel no longer considered itself strictly bound by that criterion.

“It’s not just ticking time bombs that we’re after,” he said. “Because the [Palestinian Authority] failed to discharge its responsibility and obligation to stop terror altogether, and it’s getting closer to disengagement, we’re taking off our gloves and doing what they’re supposed to do.”

Another airstrike was directed at militants firing shells from outside the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the military said. Palestinian sources said that one man was slightly injured.

Israeli aircraft later struck a rocket launcher in the Beit Hanoun area of Gaza, the army said. Two more missile strikes early today, in Gaza City and in Khan Yunis, were aimed at buildings the army described as weapons labs.

Friday’s six assassinations were Israel’s first targeted killings since September, except for an unsuccessful attempt against a member of the Islamic Jihad group late last month.

Israeli media reported Friday evening that Israeli forces had massed around Gaza in the event of an order to mount a ground campaign. Gissin said, however, that the Israeli forces “have not launched an all-out attack against Gaza. We are making selective strikes.”

The Palestinian Authority has found itself in a difficult position in recent days as it tries to bring some radicals to heel without triggering civil war. Orders to crack down on militias conducting mortar attacks ignited gun battles between Hamas fighters and Palestinian security services on Thursday and then again Friday morning. Two people died in the latter shootout.

Times special correspondents Fayed abu Shammalah in Gaza City and Maher Abukhater in the West Bank contributed to this report.