MIDDLE EAST: Defiant Palestinian militants fired rockets into an Israeli border town yesterday despite Israel's vow to stop such attacks from the Gaza Strip with a massive military offensive that has killed 63 Palestinians.
Pressing its biggest assault on the coastal territory in four years of conflict, Israel's army yesterday killed four militants and three civilians, including a 15-year-old girl.
Israel launched the offensive, codenamed "Days of Reckoning", after a Palestinian rocket strike killed two pre-schoolers in the southern town of Sderot last Wednesday.
But even as 200 tanks and armoured vehicles blanket northern Gaza, militants have kept up sporadic rocket firings, fuelling Israeli criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in the territory next year.
One makeshift Qassam rocket hit a college campus in Sderot, lightly wounding a man, police said. A second hit the town's industrial zone but caused no damage or casualties.
Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon called the raid a success and warned that the offensive would last "as long as necessary" to halt rocket attacks by militants determined to portray Israel's planned Gaza pullout as a withdrawal under fire.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Israel to halt the raid and Palestinian leaders to help stop the rocket fire. At the request of Arab nations, the Security Council was to hold an emergency session yesterday to discuss the Gaza violence.
Palestinian sources said at least 38 of the dead were militants and most of the rest were civilians. Two soldiers and a woman settler have also been killed since the raid began.
In the southern Gaza Strip, a four-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by a stray bullet fired by Israeli forces near his home, witnesses and medics said. An Israeli military source denied any shooting by the army in the area where the boy was hit.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Korei accused Israel of waging a "war of annihilation" in northern Gaza.
But Mr Sharon told soldiers visiting his official residence: "We are in the midst of a defensive battle which is certainly not easy in an effort to prevent the firing of Qassam rockets and we have made some important achievements."
Mr Sharon, under fire from rightists who say his Gaza withdrawal plan has emboldened militants to step up attacks, wants the army to crush militant groups before leaving.
In the Jabalya refugee camp, a militant stronghold, gunmen booby-trapped the streets with bombs. Residents donated carpets to militants to hang over alleys to hide from helicopters and camera-equipped drones overhead. Youths set tyre fires to obscure the view from Israeli aircraft.
Israel's army has carved out a "buffer zone" covering nine sq km, and for the first time has carried out raids deep into Jabalya, home to 100,000 refugees.
An Israeli missile killed four militants, including a Hamas field commander. The army said the men were planting bombs.
"Savage Zionist aggression continues and resistance by all means will continue until the enemy is driven from our land," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, a faction behind a campaign of suicide bombings and sworn to Israel's destruction.
The Palestinian leadership has expressed disappointment at the mostly low-key international reaction to Israel's offensive but has also signalled that militants should stop rocket attacks to avoid "giving the Israelis a pretext".
The army said it had hit seven rocket crews. But rocket firings have persisted, although at a lower rate. Two Qassams hit Sderot on Friday, followed by three on Sunday.
Some Hamas officials have suggested the militants might be ready to stop firing rockets if Israel halts its Gaza offensive, but others say the rocket attacks would continue regardless.