Israel, Hamas Trade Strikes in Gaza Area

Two Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike Sunday in the northern Gaza Strip after the Palestinian group claimed responsibility for a rocket attack into southern Israel that left an Israeli man severely injured.

Israel’s military said its aircraft targeted fighters who were preparing to launch a Kassam rocket. Militants fired more than two dozen salvos during a day of stepped-up violence.

One of those projectiles hit a college campus in Sderot, an Israeli town that is frequently the target of Palestinian rockets, and wounded a 60-year-old worker there. Although militants regularly lob rockets over the border, relatively few have resulted in injury.

The two slain militants were members of the military wing of Hamas, which a day earlier resumed rocket strikes against Israel. The radical Islamic group, which now controls the Palestinian government, had largely abided by a conditional cease-fire since early last year but declared it over Friday after blaming Israel for an explosion that killed eight Palestinian civilians on a Gaza Strip beach.

Hamas militants vowed Sunday to continue attacks against Sderot, which sits two miles from the Gaza border and also is the hometown of Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

“We will turn Sderot into a ghost town,” said a spokesman for the Hamas militants who is known as Abu Obeida.

Israeli officials named a committee to investigate Friday’s beach explosion, which they said might have been the result of an errant Israeli artillery shell. While Israeli leaders expressed regret for the eight deaths, they also suggested that the blast may have had another cause, such as a bomb planted previously by militants.

The Israeli military, which had fired several artillery rounds into the area near the beach before the explosion was reported, has halted shelling until the investigation is complete.

Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, who heads the military’s southern command, told Army Radio there were increasing signs that the explosion was not Israel’s fault. He warned Hamas against escalating violence and did not rule out an Israeli ground operation into the Gaza Strip in an effort to stop the rocket attacks. Israel withdrew its soldiers from Gaza last summer after emptying all 21 Jewish settlements there.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed “deep regret” over the deaths. However, he argued that his nation’s military did not target civilians whereas Palestinian rockets, he said, were aimed at Israeli civilians.

“For many weeks, Kassam rockets -- which are designed to maim and kill Israelis who live in nearby communities -- have been fired from the Gaza Strip. This firing is very serious. It strikes at the fabric of life in communities in southern Israel and threatens peoples’ lives,” Olmert said.

Israeli police were on heightened alert after the threats by Hamas, which was responsible for scores of Israeli deaths during a campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks before it signed on to the cease-fire agreement 16 months ago.

In Sderot, classes were canceled Sunday amid fears of new rocket attacks.

Batya Katar, who heads the Sderot parents association, said the Israeli government had done too little to protect the town.

“We are putting Sderot up for sale,” Katar told Israel Radio, reflecting the residents’ anxiety. “We don’t want to live here any more. We want to live just like any other place in the country.”

In other violence, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem was fatally shot late Sunday by unidentified gunmen near a checkpoint in northern Jerusalem that leads to the West Bank. Authorities suspect that Palestinian militants may have mistaken him for an Israeli Jew, Israel Radio reported today.

The flare-up in violence comes as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas are at loggerheads over his plan for a July 26 referendum on a Palestinian statehood proposal that implicitly recognizes Israel. Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, views the vote as a challenge to its rule by the president and his Fatah movement.

Abbas was to continue talks with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who belongs to Hamas, in an effort to iron out their differences.