INITIAL reports say at least six Palestinians have been killed by the latest Israeli air strike on the besieged Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Several people were also wounded in the missile attack.
The Israeli military confirmed the attack, but gave no further details.
Gaza is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean sea, which is home to 1.5 million Palestinians – the most densely-populated territory on earth.
On the same day, Israeli troops on the ground killed two Palestinians near Rafah on the Egyptian border.
The latest Israeli missile strike on Gaza was ordered after the death of one Israeli and two Palestinians in fighting in Dimona in the neighbouring Negev Desert – where Israel’s nuclear weapons production is based.
Israel said a Palestinian had blown himself up in a shopping mall in Dimona and broadcast graphic footage of Israeli armed forces pushing people back from the scene while a policeman shot dead a second Palestinian.
The Palestinian resistance fired two more unguided rockets towards Israel on Tuesday morning, but no injuries were reported.
The Ma’an news agency reported that on Monday Israel assassinated Amir Qarmut, alias Abu-al-Sa’id, a senior commander of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, in an air raid which targeted his car in Bayt Lahiyah in the northern Gaza Strip.
Medical sources said that three Palestinians were also wounded in this attack.
Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli reconnaissance plane fired at least one missile at a car in the vicinity of the Abu-Ubaydah school.
The assassination of Abu-al-Sa’id came two hours after the incident in Dimona
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, two members of Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades were also killed and a third critically wounded in a dawn ambush set up by occupation forces south of Jenin.
In the early hours of Tuesday, the Ma’an news agency reported that a unit of the National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had claimed responsibility for clashing with Israeli special forces.
Israeli troops had invaded the area of Gaza International Airport and besieged a house of one of the members of the National Resistance Brigades, the report said.
A statement issued by the group said that the resistance operations against the occupation would continue until an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.
An Israeli website quoted the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert as saying that Israel would reach ‘all those involved’ in operations against it.
According to the report, Israeli Defence Minister Barak noted that the Dimona incident underlined the complexity of the current situation.
Olmert apparently told a meeting of his Qadima faction in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that ‘the war exists and does not stop’.
During the discussion, Olmert told his faction about an assassination operation carried out by Israeli special forces in the Gaza Strip in the wake of the Dimona attack.
Olmert was reported to say: ‘We had many achievements in recent weeks and days, but of course they cannot be made public.’
In his remarks Olmert was also said to have praised Commander Qobi Mor, Border Police commander of the Negev District, for killing one of the Palestinians in Dimona.
‘I spoke with Dimona Mayor Me’ir Kohen who told me that the residents are taking it with restraint despite the grave result of the attack, and that they have full confidence in the IDF (Israeli army) and the security forces,’ Olmert was quoted saying.
He described the Dimona incident as ‘a painful reminder that we must be on the alert at all times and in all areas.’
Barak also referred to the Dimona incident at the opening of the Labour Party Knesset faction meeting and told the participants that he had visited the site of the attack.
‘The resourcefulness of the people who were at the site and the speedy reaction of the police officer who was there on a different mission prevented the second explosives belt on the terrorist who was wounded from blowing up, which could have led to a much larger number of casualties,’ Barak said.
‘I think that if anybody still thought he needed something to strengthen his understanding of the complex situation we are facing, to my regret he found it today in Dimona.’
Voice of Israel radio said: ‘Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that the way to fight terror is militarily . . . The foreign minister told our correspondent Shmuel Tal that money cannot be an obstacle to constructing the fence along the Israeli-Egyptian border.
‘She said along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, a partnership is required between Egypt and the international community.’
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday night that Israel would launch new military operations against the Palestinians.
Amira Oron, the ministry’s spokesman, was quoted as saying following the Dimona attack that ‘Such acts will definitely change the course of life of the Palestinian people, including children, in the (Gaza) Strip.’
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry, Trade and Labour, Eli Yishai, called on the Israeli government to halt ‘peace’ talks with the Palestinian faction led by Mahmud Abbas.
In a statement to Israel Radio, he called for more financial resources to beef up security on the borders with Egypt.
‘Israel made a fatal mistake when it pulled out from the Philadelphi corridor,’ he said, referring to the Salah al-Din Gate dividing the town of Rafah on the Egyptian border.
Meanwhile, an unattributed report claimed Egypt’s government had rejected a US-Israeli proposal ‘to settle 800,000 Palestinians’ in the Sinai Peninsula, across the border from Gaza.
The report described the ‘offer’ as a US-Israeli effort ‘to revoke the right of the Palestinian refugees to return home’.
‘The Egyptian rejection has aroused the fury of Washington and Tel Aviv which exercised strong pressure on Cairo to accept the proposal,’ the report said.
It quoted diplomatic sources as saying that Israel has offered Egypt in the past period ‘three proposals for the settlement of the Palestinian refugees’.
The proposals were said to have been submitted by senior Israeli leaders, including a government minister and a general.
‘Nonetheless, the Egyptian side has informed Israel of its rejection to settle the Gaza residents or the Diaspora Palestinians in Egyptian territories because such a settlement contradicts the right of return, which was approved by the United Nations,’ said the report.
‘Moreover, Egypt has expressed its full support of the right of the Palestinians to return back home.
‘Sources said that Israel is threatening Egypt with the suspension of the US aid if Egypt continued its rigid policy towards its proposals on the settlement of the Palestinians on its territories.
‘This has prompted Cairo to notify Tel Aviv that it would enforce a series of penalties against Israel if it continued its endeavours to market the settlement plans.
‘It followed that Egypt threatened to freeze the agreement on the crossings concluded with each of Israel and the PNA under European supervision, to revoke the agreement on the exchange of security information, and to suspend the bilateral meeting of the Egyptian-Israeli committee in reply to the proposed Israeli settlement plans.
‘Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak hastened to contain the crisis in a telephone conversation with President Mubarak by saying that Israel would not raise the idea of the settlement of the Palestinians whether as citizens or refugees in Egypt, according to the sources.
‘Meanwhile, Egypt has notified the US circles of its complete reservations over the US demand to restore Egyptian supervision of the Gaza Strip in return for the restoration of the European option to the West Bank, despite the fact that Washington pledged to support Egypt in this scenario.
‘Cairo has in fact, voiced its total rejection of any discussion of the scenarios of the settlement of Palestinian refugees or the restoration of its supervision of Gaza in talks with US delegations which visited Egypt in the past period.
‘Meanwhile, informed sources have said that Egypt has made a decision to seal off the border crossing of Rafah for good as of Friday noon, February 8, 2008, and to allow the crossing of Palestinians together with an Egyptian commitment to facilitate the entry of commodities and aid coming from Egyptian or Arab parties.
‘The sources said that Cairo has notified Hamas of its decision as part of intensifying the pressure on Hamas to enter into a serious dialogue to hand over the crossings to the PNA (Palestine National Authority), an option on which Hamas has strong reservations.’
Last week Palestinians flooded across the border into Egypt to get urgently-needed supplies, after breaking down a section of the border wall.
Israel, with American and European government support, has laid siege to Gaza in the wake of elections two years ago in which the Palestinian people of the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmingly voted the Hamas movement into power.
A Ma’an news agency report on Monday said that the Gaza Strip ‘has begun to return to its normal, hermetically-sealed life now that Salah al-Din Gate near Rafah crossing has been closed almost completely by Hamas and Egyptian security forces.’
But Ma’an also reported one Palestinian killed and four wounded by gunfire, in clashes between hundreds of protesters stranded at the border and Egyptian troops that erupted at Salah-al-Din on Monday.