MIDDLE EAST:The Israeli army killed 11 Palestinians in a series of strikes on Wednesday night and early yesterday morning in Gaza, shortly after defence minister Ehud Barak warned of an extensive military operation in the coastal strip.
Two Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli air strike before dawn yesterday near the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. The Israeli military said it had "targeted a rocket-launching cell in northern Gaza who were about to fire into Israel".
Five militants belonging to the Army of Islam were killed overnight on Wednesday when their car was hit by an Israeli rocket in Gaza City.
Israel said the vehicle was carrying rockets that the militants planned to fire at towns in the southern Negev desert.
The Army of Islam is a small group that was involved in the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl Gilad Shalit, who was snatched from a base inside Israel in June last year and is still being held in Gaza. The group was also responsible for the kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston earlier this year.
Four Palestinians, at least two of them civilians, were killed on Wednesday evening by a shell in Beit Hanoun, after Israeli ground forces entered the area. The operation, during which tanks backed by helicopters moved about two kilometres into the Strip, in what the army said was part of an effort to clear vegetation used by militants as cover for firing rockets, ended yesterday morning.
Eleven rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel during this period, two of them landing in the town of Sderot and another hitting a house in another nearby community. There were no injuries in the rocket attacks.
The strikes in Gaza come a week after Israel declared the Hamas-run coastal strip "hostile territory".
Mr Barak said on Wednesday that Israel was "approaching a large-scale operation" in Gaza, due to the continued rocket fire.
"This operation will not be simple, both because of the forces that will have to be involved and the length of time we will have to stay [ in Gaza] . . . It is very complicated."
Israel has launched several military strikes in Gaza over the last year but has failed to halt the ongoing rocket fire.
The Palestinian news agency reported yesterday that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who is currently in New York, addressed the United Nations Security Council and world leaders and insisted that they "stop the massacre of Palestinians being carried out by the army of the occupation in the Gaza Strip".