Israel kills 13 Palestinian militants in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed 13 Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, its most deadly air strikes in months against fighters behind rocket attacks from the Hamas-run territory.

Islamic Jihad, the group behind many of the rocket launchings that disrupt life and cause panic in Israeli towns, said four of its members were killed early on Tuesday as they left a mosque in the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Hours earlier, air strikes in and around Gaza City killed seven Islamic Jihad militants, including a senior Gaza commander, prompting the group to threaten suicide bombings inside the Jewish state.

Israel has not been hit by a suicide bombing in 11 months, a respite that helped pave the way for renewed peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who opposes such attacks.

Hamas officials said two of its security men died in an air strike on their position in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army said the attack was in response to mortar bombs fired earlier at southern Israel. It said gunmen also launched five rockets. No one was hurt on the Israeli side.

The attacks mark an escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence since the Annapolis peace conference in the United States last month that revived peace talks between Israel and the Western-backed government of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip rarely cause injuries or deaths but frighten residents of Israeli border towns have been pressing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to launch a ground offensive.

Olmert told his parliamentary colleagues from the Kadima party at a closed meeting that Israel would keep "hunting" militants and would find those who attack Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip, a party spokesman said.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, referring to the air strikes, told reporters in Tel Aviv: "I hope these successes will continue". But he warned that Israel "would have to take all precautions against possible retaliation."

Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza whose government was sacked by Abbas after the Islamic militant group seized Gaza in June, said Palestinians wanted an end to the attacks.

"These strikes will not weaken the Palestinian people ... but at the same time, as people we are most in need of calm and peace and we need the shedding of our blood to be stopped.

"We have urged our Arab brothers to intervene to end the continued aggression against our people," Haniyeh said.

OBSTACLE TO PEACE

In Paris, where he attended an international donors meeting after the Annapolis conference, Abbas urged Israel to stop construction in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling such work "an obstacle that hampers negotiations".

Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said construction was largely limited to settlement blocs Israel intended to keep in any peace deal with the Palestinians.

U.S. President George W. Bush will visit Israel and the West Bank next month as part of a Middle East tour aimed at bolstering the fragile peace efforts, the White House said.

At a funeral for the Islamic Jihad fighters, gunmen fired in the air, accidentally severing a high-voltage power line. It fell on the crowd, killing one of the mourners and wounding seven others, medical officials said.

Palestinian officials said Majed al-Harazeen, one of the Islamic Jihad dead, was the most senior militant commander to be killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip in more than a year.

Broadcasting on a radio frequency used by Gaza militants, an Islamic Jihad official ordered fighters to turn off their mobile phones and remove their batteries to foil Israeli electronic tracking and to stay out of vehicles.

Israeli officials have said a huge military push back into the Gaza Strip, which Israeli troops and settlers quit in 2005, could result in heavy Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Olmert, said more than 2,000 rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip in recent months.

(Additional reporting by Wael al-Ahmed in Jenin, Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Kerstin Gehmlich in Paris, Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Editing by Sami Aboudi)