Israel raids Gaza, 6 dead

Israel’s cabinet on Tuesday decided on sustained military action against Gaza militants, keen to prevent them claiming victory if Prime Minister Ariel Sharon goes ahead with a planned evacuation of Jewish settlements from the seaside territory.

Sunday’s suicide attack that killed 10 Israelis in Ashdod unnerved Israeli security chiefs because the bombers managed to slip out of fenced-in Gaza for the first time in almost three-and-a-half years of conflict. Palestinian gunmen lay in wait throughout Gaza for what they expected to be widescale Israeli incursions into the strip.

In Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt, an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles overnight into a group of Palestinians, killing a gunman and a 45-year-old bystander, witnesses said.

Military sources said troops fired two missiles at two armed Palestinian groups laying explosive charges intended to counter Israeli forces who often raid the camp, a bastion of militants. Another missile launched into Rafah around 8 am GMT killed a 17-year-old and critically wounded a boy of 15 who died later, medics said. Israeli sources said the missile targeted a group of gunmen digging in.

Islamic Jihad identified one of the dead in the Gaza City missile attack as a member and the other as a passerby. Fourteen people, including three children, were hurt.

Fighting between Palestinians also erupted in Gaza City on Wednesday when security forces halted a car filled with Hamas militants.

Meanwhile, Israel’s defence establishment advised Sharon on Wednesday to quit most of the Gaza Strip, strengthening his hand against rightists opposed to his plan, officials said. Sharon has said he will take unilateral action to separate Israel from the Palestinians if peace talks remain stalled, uprooting Jewish settlers from Gaza but keeping big parts of the West Bank where Palestinians also want a state. Right-wingers, who are against ceding any land that Israel seized in the 1967 West Asia war, strongly oppose his plan.

The Defence Ministry and security forces advised Sharon at a meeting on Wednesday that it made sense to leave most of the Gaza Strip except for a corridor along the border with Egypt, officials said. But they said that in the West Bank, Israel should abandon only ‘‘isolated settlements’’. The advice contrasted sharply with the concern expressed recently by some Army officers that quitting Gaza could embolden militants, a view leapt on by the pro-settler lobby.