Israel and Hamas fight on Gaza border

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - A rocket launched from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip killed a man in Israel on Wednesday, the first such death in nine months, and Israeli air strikes killed six Palestinian militants and five civilians in the territory.

The rocket, one of 40 Hamas said it fired in response to an air strike, seemed certain to increase public pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to order tougher Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip that might include a widescale ground operation.

As well as targeting armed men on the ground, Israel's air force bombed the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, witnesses said. The blast damaged nearby buildings, killing a 6-month-old baby and wounding at least 14 other people, hospital officials said.

The mounting violence could complicate peace talks between Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority which Washington hopes can lead to a deal on statehood this year.

"The Hamas terror endangers not only the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, but also the peace and stability of the entire region," Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement which called rocket salvoes a "war crime".

Earlier, five senior members of Hamas were killed when the van in which they were traveling was attacked from the air near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, medical officials said.

Local residents who knew the men said some had undergone training in Syria or Iran and returned home after Hamas breached Gaza's border with Egypt last month in defiance of an Israeli blockade of the territory. Hamas denied they had left Gaza.

Hamas, which seized Gaza in June after defeating Abbas's forces, hit back. They were the first Hamas rockets fired in two weeks, although allied militants had maintained daily salvoes. Four Palestinian civilians -- two men and two youths, medics said -- died in air strikes near launch sites in northern Gaza.

The Israeli who died was identified as a 47-year-old man attending college in Sderot, a town near Gaza's border.

No one had been killed in Israel by a Palestinian rocket strike since May. Such attacks are launched almost daily from Gaza, which Israeli soldiers and settlers quit in 2005.

ROCKET SALVOES

"The (rocket) bombardment came in response to the Zionist massacre committed this morning in Khan Younis which led to the martyrdom of five of our best fighters," a Hamas statement said.

A militant from the allied Islamic Jihad died in a separate Israeli attack east of Bureij in central Gaza, medics said.

Hamas, shunned by the West for refusing to recognize the Jewish state, says attacks from Gaza are a response to Israeli military raids in the territory and the occupied West Bank.

The salvoes would end if Israel stopped all such military activity and lifted its blockade, Hamas says.