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Israeli air strikes kill seven Hamas militants

Women and children march in a protest near the Erez Crossing in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday. The demonstration, organized by Hamas, was against Israel`s economic blockade of the Gaza Strip. PHOTO: AP

Israel killed seven Hamas militants in a series of air strikes after the group detonated two jeeps packed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives at an Israeli crossing on the Gaza border.

Two of the militants were killed early yesterday.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the area of Saturday’s twin suicide attacks, which wounded 13 soldiers, and warned Hamas would “bear the consequences.”

However, an immediate Israeli offensive appears unlikely — Israelis are marking the Jewish Passover holiday and next month will celebrate their country’s 60th birthday, with US President George W. Bush attending.

Hamas said Saturday’s attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing was part of a campaign to break the nearly yearlong blockade of the Gaza, by force if necessary. Israel and Egypt virtually sealed Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory by force.

In Damascus, former US president Jimmy Carter met with senior Hamas leaders on Friday and Saturday, defying US and Israeli warnings that doing so would grant the group legitimacy. Hamas officials said Gaza’s closure and a possible Israel-Hamas prisoner swap were discussed. They said the group did not respond to Carter’s request that it halt rocket fire on Israeli border towns or that it agree to talk to Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishak about a prisoner exchange.

Following the crossing attack, Israel targeted Hamas militants in a series of missile strikes, killing seven. Of those, five were killed on Saturday and two early yesterday. Four Hamas gunmen were wounded in yesterday’s strikes in northern Gaza and east of Gaza City, medics said.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the crossings would be targeted again. Saturday’s attacks “are the beginning of the explosions that Hamas has warned of,” he said. “If the parties don’t intervene quickly to save Gaza and break the siege, what is coming will be greater.”

The attack on Kerem Shalom started at about 6am on Saturday, said Major General Yoav Galant, the top army commander in the area. Hamas militants drove an armored personnel carrier and two jeeps made to look like Israeli army vehicles toward the crossing under the cover of morning fog as Hamas pounded the border area with heavy mortar fire.

Galant said that Hamas apparently tried to cause a large number of casualties and to kidnap soldiers.
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