Israel strikes into Gaza

BEIT HANOUN: Israeli tanks firing machineguns thrust into Gaza on Tuesday, killing one Palestinian militant in a retaliatory raid for the first deadly cross-border rocket strike from the strip that Israel plans to abandon.

Troops besieged Beit Hanoun, barely two kilometres from the Israeli town of Sderot, where makeshift missiles fired by Hamas militants killed a three-year-old-boy outside a kindergarten and a 49-year-old man on Monday.

Similar rockets killed an Israeli and injured two others inside Israel on Tuesday, intensifying a surge of violence that has complicated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull Jewish settlers out of the occupied Gaza Strip next year.

An Israeli man was found shot dead in the West Bank on Tuesday and the army suspected he had been killed by a Palestinian, military sources said.

The casualties have fuelled anxiety in the Jewish state that leaving Gaza would not stop it being used as a base for attacks, one of the main arguments of the pullout plan’s opponents. agencies

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