Three die in weekend of attacks across Gaza border

Israeli air strikes killed three Palestinians, while militants fired dozens of rockets at Israeli towns yesterday.

The attacks come amid the area’s worst fighting for a year, which started on Friday, after a top Palestinian militant was killed in an air strike.

Despite Egyptian officials’ attempts to mediate, the attacks killed 18 Palestinians – all but two of them militants – and disrupted the lives of a million Israelis living in Gaza rocket range.

Israeli air strikes yesterday killed a 12-year-old boy, a 60-year-old farm guard and a militant, said a health official. The boy was hit while walking with a friend to school in the northern town of Jebaliya and the guard died in Gaza City while walking with his dog, which was also killed, he said.

Meanwhile, Palestinians fired 30 rockets at southern Israel. One struck the courtyard of an empty school in Beersheba, police said. Sunday is a school day in Israel, but schools in rocket range were closed to try to prevent casualties.

Despite the renewed tensions, Israeli politicians and Gaza’s Hamas leaders seemed eager to avoid a full-scale conflict. ,

Hamas has pointedly kept its large rocket arsenal and thousands of fighters out of the confrontation, even though it has not tried to stop two smaller Gaza groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), from launching rockets and mortars.

Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak acknowledged that Hamas did not take part in the latest attacks.

Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, said yesterday that the Israeli military was “not interested in escalation in and of itself”.

Meanwhile, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged the air strikes would continue as long as necessary.

He said: “We have a clear policy: we will hit anyone who plans to harm us, who prepares to harm us and who harms us.”

Israel said it launched Friday’s initial air strike, which killed PRC leader Zuhair al-Qaissi in a car in central Gaza City, to stop a plan by his militant splinter group to infiltrate into Israel through Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula.

Israel says the PRC was behind an attack on the border in August, killing eight.

Palestinians across the political spectrum accused Israel of deliberately escalating tensions. The groups involved in firing rockets dismissed truce offers presented by Egypt.

“We will not give calm for free, and the blood of our leaders and martyrs will not be spilled in vain,” said a PRC spokesman.

An uneasy informal truce has held on the Gaza-Israel border since the Gaza war that started at the end of 2008, though smaller Gaza groups fire rockets and mortarson occasion.

Three Israelis have been injured by rocket fire since Friday, two of them seriously, the defence ministry said.