Gaza City/Tel Aviv - Israel launched four new airstrikes in northern Gaza Friday, continuing an intense air campaign in the Strip that has since mid-week killed at least 28 Palestinians. The campaign is retaliation for a barrage of rockets from the Strip at Israel's southern communities, which claimed the life of an Israeli civilian Wednesday.
Israel launched three close airstrikes north of Gaza City late Friday morning, targeting rocket launching sites, but also hitting a house in the Jabilia refugee camp and injuring four civilians, among them two children, Palestinian hospital officials said.
An earlier aerial attack overnight targeted a rocket-production site, a military spokeswoman said.
She said the Israeli military did not intend to harm civilians, but said the militants were launching their rockets from within residential areas.
The radical Islamic Hamas movement and other militant factions launched at least 120 rockets and mortar shells at the town of Sderot, the coastal city of Ashqelon and other Israeli communities near the Strip since Wednesday morning.
Four of them landed near Sderot Friday morning.
Israel has responded with as many as nine airstrikes Wednesday, killing at least 11 Palestinians, and some 12 Thursday, killing at least 17.
Israeli soldiers also shot dead three gunmen during arrest raids in the northern West Bank city of Nablus Wednesday and Thursday, bringing the total death toll to 31.
Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein said the deaths included eight children, the youngest a 5-month-old baby boy.
The latest escalation came after an Israeli strike on a van with Hamas fighters in southern Gaza Wednesday morning.
That targeted strike, in turn, was an Israeli retaliation for earlier rocket attacks from Gaza, which have been ongoing for the past seven years since the Palestinian uprising erupted amid a deadlock in peace talks, but were intensified after Hamas violently seized sole control of the Strip in June.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas relaunched negotiations in November, ending a seven- year freeze in the peace process. But the Gaza violence has shaken the fragile, troubled talks.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to depart for the region Monday to follow up on the talks amid the Gaza quagmire. But Israel Radio reported that Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman cancelled talks with Olmert in Jerusalem to protest the Gaza aerial attacks.
Olmert held urgent consultations with defence officials Friday morning shortly after returning from a four-day trip to Japan.
The latest flare-up strengthened fears of a large-scale Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. Israeli media reported that the military had completed preparations for such an offensive, and deployed dozens of tanks at a gathering point north of the Strip.
But the Israeli military spokeswoman said, "We don't know anything about something like that."
Israel Radio quoted a senior government official Friday morning as saying Israel had no intention of launching the large-scale offensive for the time being, and instead would continue combating the rocket launchers "according to the current format" of intense airstrikes and brief, limited ground incursions.
Israel said it regarded as a "real escalation" the firing of some 11 longer-range Russian-made Grad rockets at Ashqelon, a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants about 15 kilometres north of the Strip, which until recently was largely out of reach for the projectiles fired from Gaza, most of which are locally-produced Qassam, al-Quds and Nasser rockets.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak for the first time ordered the installation of an air siren alarm system in the city, similar to the one that has been operating in the hardest-hit town of Sderot, codenamed "Colour Red."
Barak told reporters Thursday the option of a large-scale offensive in Gaza was "real and concrete." But he added Israel was "not keen" to launch one, although it was not afraid either.
"There are complex considerations about its timing which cannot be shared with Hamas and the public," he said, adding Israel would first try "all other options."
