Mideast truce unravels during day of violence

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The van, loaded with homemade rockets, was racing through a crowded Gaza City street when an Israeli aircraft swooped down and launched an airstrike. The dead were senior Hamas weapons makers, the army said.

Other airstrikes Friday and early Saturday hit caves where fighters huddled and left six dead in all. The strikes seemed to signal Israel's readiness to return to targeted killings and came after days of escalating violence, including a barrage of deadly rocket and mortar attacks and a suicide bombing.

Also Friday, in a sign of the power struggle among Palestinians as Israel's scheduled pullout nears, a gunbattle between Palestinian police and militants in Gaza City left two teenagers dead and 25 people wounded. It was the worst internal fighting among Palestinians in recent years.

When Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas signed a truce in Egypt in February, Israel agreed to stop targeting militant leaders. The pact led to a drop in violence and helped Abbas fend off Israeli demands for a crackdown on militant groups.

The Gaza City clashes erupted after Palestinian security forces raided a neighborhood, searching for militants suspected of firing rockets.

But Sharon's office defended a return to the targeted airstrikes, saying: "We are taking these measures to stop these attacks as the Palestinian Authority refuses to do so."

Hamas threatened revenge, and the violence seemed likely to intensify.

In a sign of U.S. concern, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scrambled her schedule to squeeze in a trip to the Middle East, and a U.S. spokesman urged both sides to "seize the opportunity" to make Israel's scheduled Gaza withdrawal a success despite recent attacks.

State Department Sean McCormack gave no precise date for Rice to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but the trip was tacked onto one to Africa she is expected to undertake next week.

Israeli troops were massed late Friday at two makeshift camps outside Gaza, and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told army commanders to plan for a ground operation in northern Gaza. The raid was being delayed to give the Palestinians time to take action, officials said.

Israel and the United States have pressured Abbas to do more to rein in armed groups. The attempted tough Palestinian police action in Gaza suggested that Abbas might be responding -- but raised questions about the effectiveness of that response.

The Gaza City clashes erupted after Palestinian security forces raided a neighborhood, searching for militants suspected of firing rockets.

Militants later torched a police station and set a police armored personnel carrier and three jeeps afire, sending thick black smoke above the neighborhood as masked Hamas gunmen stood guard outside the building.

Two boys, ages 17 and 13, were killed in crossfire.

After heavy exchanges of fire, police pulled out of the neighborhood while masked gunmen took up positions on street corners and rooftops. Hundreds of civilians flocked to the streets, watching the fighting.

Among the wounded were six policemen and 19 civilians, hospital officials said. It was not clear whether Hamas gunmen were hurt; the militants were not expected to take their activists to hospitals for fear of arrest.

Palestinian security chief Nasser Yousef said his forces will "not hesitate" to restore law and order, and ordered rocket attacks to be stopped by all means.

However, the militants kept attacking Israeli targets throughout the day, launching dozens of mortar shells and rockets from across the Gaza Strip.

Israeli aircraft targeted Hamas militants hiding in caves two miles from the West Bank town of Salfit, killing one Hamas militant and wounding another, the military said. Troops on the ground then killed a local Hamas leader who fired at them with an automatic weapon.

Clashes broke out later between the army and stone-throwing protesters, and a 16-year-old Palestinian boy suffered a gunshot wound to the head, hospital officials said.

Soon after the first airstrike, Israeli aircraft destroyed a van carrying militants and a cache of homemade rockets as it raced through a Gaza City street, the army and Palestinian officials said. Four Hamas militants were killed, they said.

The army said the airstrike targeted senior Hamas weapons manufacturers on their way to launching more rockets against Israeli targets.

Later, an Israeli drone sent a missile toward militants trying to launch rockets in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, witnesses said. The militants escaped unharmed, they said.

Early Saturday, an Israeli missile landed outside a metal workshop in Gaza City, but did not appear to have exploded, Palestinian security forces said.

Minutes later, another airstrike hit near a United Nations food warehouse next to the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. A man and a girl were slightly wounded, hospital officials said.

In Khan Younis, a drone plane launched a missile at militants armed with mortars and homemade rockets and minutes later helicopters fired missiles at a metal workshop and a garage in Khan Younis, witnesses said. No one was injured in either strike.

The army said two strikes in Gaza City and a third in Khan Younis were aimed at buildings Hamas used to make weapons.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat on Friday condemned the airstrikes and said they were counterproductive.

"It comes at a time when we are trying to maintain the rule of law," he said, adding that the airstrikes "undermine our ability to do so."

The Hamas attacks also were intended to underscore a Hamas demand to share power in Gaza after Israel's scheduled withdrawal next month.

But Sakher Bseisso, a Palestinian Cabinet minister, warned the militants were leaving Abbas little choice but to crack down. "Hamas is trying to impose its control on the ground," he said.

Friday's violence follows other bloodshed this week. Five Israelis were killed by a suicide bomber in Netanya on Tuesday and one Israeli woman was killed in a rocket fired as part of the barrage late Thursday aimed at a communal farm just outside Gaza.

A Palestinian police officer and a militant also were killed in Israeli army raids this week.