Israeli strike kills 2 Hamas militants

JERUSALEM -- Israel continued its new offensive against the Palestinian militant group Hamas Saturday, killing two of its members in a helicopter strike against a vehicle traveling in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian security officials said.

It was the fifth time in 10 days that Israeli aircraft had launched a targeted assassination operation against Hamas militants. Ten members of Hamas -- officially known as the Islamic Resistance Movement -- have been killed in the attacks. Two bystanders have also been killed, and dozens of Palestinians have been wounded.

In a separate incident, Israeli troops killed a 9-year-old Palestinian girl and wounded eight other people in the southern Gaza Strip. The child was killed when Israeli troops returned fire after their vehicle was damaged by Palestinian fire near a Jewish settlement, the officials said.

The events illustrate how quickly the cycle of violence can start to spin out of control in the Middle East.

Israel began its offensive by killing a senior Hamas leader on Aug. 21 in retaliation for a suicide bus bombing by a Hamas militant two days earlier in Jerusalem that killed 21 people.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups broke off a cease- fire they had declared in June and vowed revenge. Hamas has responded by firing homemade rockets and mortar shells at Jewish settlements and Israeli communities in and around the Gaza Strip. Israeli military sources say Palestinian militants have launched 14 homemade Qassam rockets and 69 mortar shells at Israeli targets in the last week. No one has been injured in the attacks.

Palestinian officials said that Saturday night Palestinian militants fired two mortars at the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in southern Gaza, and that Israeli troops returned fire, killing Ayah Fayyad, 9, in her home in El Namsawy, a small community northwest of Khan Younis. Eight people were injured in nearby communities.

An Israeli military spokesman, however, disputed that account, saying that Israeli soldiers returned fire after an armored vehicle on routine patrol outside the Gush Katif settlement in southern Gaza came under fire and was damaged. He said soldiers fired at an area that they thought the Palestinian attackers were using as shelter. The military is investigating reports that a Palestinian girl had been killed, he said.

In the targeted assassination Saturday, witnesses and security officials said an Israeli AH-64 Apache attack helicopter fired a missile at a white van that was traveling between the al-Nusseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza about 4 p.m. The missile missed the van and exploded in front of it, witnesses said.

The van then tried to speed away but was struck by two more missiles, witnesses and Palestinian security officials said. One man was killed in the car. The other man tried to run away and hide in a large drainage pipe but was chased by the Israeli helicopter and killed by a fourth missile, witnesses said.

Palestinian and Israeli officials identified the dead militants as Abdullah Akel, a top member of the military wing of Hamas in the central Gaza Strip, and Farid Mayat, also a member of the military wing. Israeli military sources said Akel was "intensively involved in firing Qassam rockets and mortar shells at Israeli communities" and was preparing more strikes when he was killed.

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