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Israeli strike kills six in Gaza Israeli raids kill nine in Gaza
(about 5 hours later)
An Israeli air strike has hit a police station in Gaza, killing six members of the Hamas security force, Palestinian sources say. Israeli forces have killed nine Hamas members in Gaza, as the Islamist group's armed wing said it was behind Monday's suicide bombing in Israel.
Several people were also wounded in the strike, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Seven Hamas men died in an air strike in southern Gaza and two others were shot near the Gaza-Egypt border.
The Israeli military confirmed the attack, but gave no further details. Earlier on Tuesday Israeli troops shot dead two Hamas militants. Hamas officials said the seven men were holding afternoon prayers at a security compound when the missile struck.
The strikes come a day after a suicide bomber killed an Israeli woman in Dimona, the first such bomb for a year. The Dimona suicide attack, in which a woman and two bombers died, would be Hamas's first inside Israel since 2004.
Two suicide bombers attacked Dimona one day after Egypt ended the two-week breach of its border with the Gaza Strip by resealing the last gaps. However, there remains confusion about the identity of the bombers, after rival groups claimed the attack in the hours afterwards.
Hamas, a militant Islamist group, has controlled the Gaza Strip since June 2006 when it drove out the forces of the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas said the attackers came from the West Bank city of Hebron.
The Israeli air strike on Tuesday targeted the village of Abisan, while the ground incident took place near Rafah, on the Egyptian border. Its main militant rival, the al-Aqsa Martyrs, said they had come from Gaza, whose closed border near Rafah was breached on 23 January, prompting Israeli fears of infiltration by Palestinian militants via Egypt.
One of the men killed in the Rafah attack was buried only hours later One of the bombers was injured when his accomplice detonated his bomb in what appeared to have been intended as a co-ordinated attack.
Israeli police were on a heightened state of alert after the Dimona attack, especially on the border with Egypt. Israeli police shot the injured man before he was able to denote his own explosives belt.
Graphic footage has been broadcast of the aftermath of the bombing: police push people back from the scene while an officer shoots dead a second Palestinian lying injured and apparently trying to detonate an explosives belt around his waist. An Israeli army spokesman said Tuesday's air strike in Abisan, near Rafah, was in response to rocket attacks that hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot earlier.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militants fired two unguided rockets into Israel on Tuesday morning, causing damage to two factories, according to the Associated Press. No injuries were immediately reported. More rockets followed the air strike, and Hamas vowed to take further action.
"This blood will not be shed in vain; this crime will not go unanswered and the Israeli occupation will pay a heavy price," Sami Abu Zuhri said in remarks quoted by AFP.
Hamas - de facto controllers of Gaza - oppose Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's peace talks with Israel.
Top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators who met after the Dimona bombing said their efforts would continue regardless of the attack.
Meanwhile, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party, Tzachi Hanegbi, urged the government to revive the tactic of assassinating Hamas political leaders, in addition to strikes against armed elements.
Israel is on high alert after Monday's bombing, with special emphasis on the long and unmarked desert border with Egypt.