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GAZA CITY, Oct 25 (AFP): Tensions mounted in the Gaza Strip Tuesday after Israel launched air and artillery strikes following Palestinian rocket attacks to avenge the killing of a militant.
As the Israeli army vowed to use all means to protect its citizens, US President George W. Bush insisted Washington was "fully committed" to the largely sunk roadmap peace plan drafted by the international community.
Israel's killing of a top West Bank militant Sunday, revenge rocket attacks from Gaza and subsequent Israeli strikes have added up to the worst violence since hardline groups agreed to stop Gaza-based attacks on Israel last month.
With most of Israel grinding to a halt to mark the Jewish religious holiday of Sukhot, the army vowed to use all means possible to protect its citizens.
"The Israeli army will react with determination to put an end to attacks and will use all means in order to prevent Israeli citizens from coming to harm," a spokeswoman told AFP.
Late Monday, Israeli artillery shelled open fields in northern Gaza before aircraft bombed neighbouring land that the army said was a rocket launch site.
Aircraft then fired a missile into a building belonging to Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party in the northern town of Beit Hanoun and another office in Rafah, in the south, used by radical group Islamic Jihad.
Five people, including two women and a child, were wounded in the Rafah attack, Palestinian interior ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khossa said, condemning what he called "Israel's escalating aggression" in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli jets broke the sound barrier, unleashing deafening booms over Gaza City four times since late Monday, an AFP correspondent said.
The Israeli military said aircraft had shelled a Beit Hanoun building of the Fatah-linked Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as well as a Jihad building in Rafah.
"The shelling targeted the uninhabited area from where the rockets were fired," a military source told AFP.
The flareup marked the first Gaza-based strikes on Israel since militants announced on September 27 that they would stop attacks following an earlier cycle of unrest after Israel's historic pullout from the territory.
Bush, who had said last week when Abbas visited Washington that he was not certain a Palestinian state would materialise before the end of his second term in office in 2009, used an interview to be more optimistic.
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