An Israeli warplane and artillery gunners attacked rocket launch sites in Gaza today hours after Israel killed a senior militant in response to a suicide bombing at a shopping mall.
The new violence tested an already shaky ceasefire and a peace process on hold as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced a campaign for re-election in a March poll.
Witnesses said an Israeli fighter jet bombed an open area in northern Gaza in a predawn raid, after soldiers fired dozens of artillery rounds at rocket launch sites in the northern Gaza Strip. None of the assaults caused any injury.
Popular Resistance Committees spokesman
The Israeli army said its aircraft had fired the missile to cut off an access road to sites from where militants had launched rockets at Israeli towns since a senior militant was killed in an Israeli air strike on his car yesterday.
The Popular Resistance Committees had vowed revenge for the death of its field commander in the raid in the Gaza town of Rafah. Ten other people were wounded in that attack, including three children struck by shrapnel.
"Israel has opened the gates to hell by assassinating one of our leaders," a Popular Committees spokesman, said.
Israel also besieged a building near the West Bank town of Jenin and arrested two Islamic Jihad militants there, in a further retaliatory measure approved by the security cabinet after Monday's bomb blast killed five in the town of Netanya.
The bombing had been claimed by Islamic Jihad, who called the bombing a response to previous Israeli attacks on its members.
The latest fighting has further diminished world hopes that Israel's withdrawal of forces from the Gaza Strip in September would lead to a quick resumption of peace talks.