Israeli assaults in Gaza kill seven Palestinians

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in an airstrike and ground assault Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, retaliating for a barrage of mortar and rocket fire into southern Israel.

On the bloodiest day in Gaza since Israel declared it a “hostile territory” last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the military was “moving closer to a broad and complex operation” in the enclave ruled by the Islamic movement Hamas.

The Israeli airstrike hit a jeep on a Gaza City highway, killing three of its occupants and wounding the fourth, hospital officials said. The targeted men were members of the Army of Islam, a Hamas offshoot involved in the capture last year of an Israeli soldier who is still missing and the March kidnapping of a BBC correspondent who was later freed.

The Israeli military said the jeep was transporting rockets to launch sites.

Dozens of Palestinians surrounded the wrecked vehicle, some dipping their hands in the dead men’s blood and crying out for revenge.

About 10 miles to the north, Israeli troops backed by dozens of tanks and armored bulldozers moved into the town of Beit Hanoun, setting off clashes with Hamas and other armed groups. Hospital officials said 17 Palestinians were wounded in the fighting.

Witnesses said an Israeli tank shell struck a residential building in Beit Hanoun, killing a militant who had been firing rocket-propelled grenades at the tanks.

Hospital officials said three teenagers in a crowd of bystanders also were killed by the shell.

The Popular Resistance Committees said the dead militant was one of its members.

Israel said the raids were a response to near daily bombardment of Israeli border towns, including 20 mortar shells and 10 rockets fired Wednesday.

Much of the fire comes from Beit Hanoun.

Small militant groups such as the Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad fire most of the rockets, with little apparent interference from Hamas. By designating Gaza as a hostile territory, Israel formally held the political leadership responsible for the attacks, a precursor to a possible cutoff of electricity, water and fuel to the enclave’s 1.5 million people.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called the military offensive Wednesday “a new wave of Israeli aggression” and said it would only strengthen the resolve of Palestinians to fight back.

Israel withdrew Jewish settlers and military bases from Gaza in 2005 after 38 years of occupation. Palestinians here say they are still fighting occupation because Israel controls the territory’s borders, waters and airspace.

In a sign that rocket-launching cells might spread to the West Bank, Palestinian security officials said Wednesday that they had seized two homemade rockets in Bethlehem and turned them over to the Israeli army.

The West Bank-based government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been cooperating more with Israel since Hamas gunmen seized control of Gaza in June, ousting security forces loyal to him.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, meanwhile, the Israeli army arrested the fifth and last remaining wanted suspect in a deadly mob attack on two Israeli reservists in 2000, a videotaped incident that came to symbolize the brutality of the second Palestinian uprising.

Palestinian officials said Ayman Zaban, a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, was taken into custody after Israeli military vehicles surrounded a residential building where he was sleeping.

A spokesman for the militant group said Zaban was not involved in the 2000 incident.

The attack seven years ago took place in the West Bank city of Ramallah after the Israelis, who had taken a wrong turn en route to their military base, were arrested and taken to a police station. The mob stormed the station and beat and stabbed them to death, then tossed their bodies from a second-story window.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Special correspondent Abu Alouf reported from Gaza City and Times staff writer Boudreaux from Jerusalem.