Israeli army strikes Gaza after school bus hit

[April 08, 2011]  JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli aircraft and ground forces struck Gaza on Friday, killing two Hamas gunmen and three civilians in a surge of fighting sparked by a Palestinian rocket attack on an Israeli school bus the day before.

Just over two years after rocket fire from Gaza triggered a devastating Israeli military offensive in the territory, Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers seem on the brink of another round of intense violence.

In Thursday's bus attack, Gaza militants hit an Israeli school bus near the border with an anti-tank rocket, badly wounding the driver and a 16-year-old boy.

By Friday morning, Israel's ongoing retaliation had killed 10 Gazans -- five militants, a policeman and four civilians -- and wounded 45. The dead included three civilians killed by Israeli tank fire and two militants killed in an air strike, both near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

Hamas, which had largely held its fire since Israel's last major offensive, claimed responsibility for the bus attack.

Most of the schoolchildren on the bus, clearly identifiable as a civilian vehicle, got off shortly before the attack. Had the bus been full, broader Israeli retaliation would have been all but inevitable and the region -- already destabilized by the popular revolts sweeping the Arab world -- could have been drawn into another war.

It is unclear if Hamas was trying to provoke a new conflagration, if it was not fully in control of all of its fighters, or if it believes Israel would pull back before invading Gaza again. Israel was condemned internationally after the last incursion.

Hamas said the rocket attack was in retaliation for the killing of three fighters in an airstrike earlier in the week. At around midnight Thursday, with Gaza rocked by explosions, the organization announced a cease-fire.

The Israeli strikes continued, hitting Hamas facilities and smuggling tunnels. Electricity lines and transformers were damaged, causing power blackouts in some parts of the territory, according to Jamal Dardsawi, a spokesman for Gaza's Electric Distribution Company.

In Israel, studies at some schools near Gaza were canceled Friday because of concerns for the students' safety.

Matan Vilnai, the Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of the home front, told Army Radio that Israel was engaged in a "war of attrition" and that it was trying to deter more attacks. "We are acting as we see fit so that this type of fire will not continue, and so that the people behind the fire will regret it," Vilnai said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday condemned the bus attack and expressed concern over civilian casualties in Israel's strikes in Gaza. He called for "de-escalation and calm to prevent any further bloodshed."

The new round of fighting saw a potentially significant strategic breakthrough.

After years of development by an Israeli defense contractor, the Israeli military made use of a new missile-defense system for the first time Thursday. The Iron Dome system fired an interceptor missile at an incoming Palestinian rocket aimed at an Israeli city, shooting it down, the military said.

Thousands of rockets from Gaza have hit Israeli towns and cities since 2001. Israel's attempts to stop the rockets have included military incursions and covert operations abroad aimed at disrupting Hamas' efforts to procure arms.

In February, a Palestinian engineer was seized from a sleeper train in Ukraine and showed up several days later in Israel, where he has been charged with masterminding Hamas' rocket program. Last year a Hamas operative was assassinated in Dubai, and Israeli agents are widely assumed to have been responsible. Israel identified the man as a Hamas agent responsible for obtaining weaponry from Iran.

This week, Sudan accused Israel of being behind an explosion that killed two in Port Sudan. The blast was thought to be linked to arms smuggling to Gaza. Israel would not comment.

[Associated Press; By MATTI FRIEDMAN]

Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak contributed reporting from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

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