Gaza militants bombard Israel after deadly blast

[Saguaro]

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Palestinian militants bombarded southern Israel on Thursday after a Hamas commander's house in northern Gaza was blown up in a blast which killed four people.

The attacks started immediately after the explosion which Palestinian medics said also wounded 50 other people -- including a four-month-old baby -- in and around the two-storey building.

Fifteen children are among the wounded, medics said. Earlier they gave a toll of three dead, but said a fourth body was recovered several hours after the blast.

The Israeli military said nearly 50 rockets and mortar rounds were fired from the Gaza Strip following the explosion, which Hamas blamed on the Jewish state despite its denial of involvement.

"Only yesterday, Israel decided to give a chance to the Egyptian initiative which could have brought calm to the south," the Israeli prime minister's spokesman Mark Regev told AFP.

"The barrage of rockets today shows that Hamas has no interest in calm and is committed to violence, terror and murder."

However at Wednesday's meeting, the Israeli security cabinet also ordered the military to make the necessary preparations for a major ground offensive against Gaza if the Egyptian-brokered truce talks fail to bear fruit, prompting Hamas to ridicule the genuiness of its stated desire for a ceasefire.

A senior Israeli defence official was in Cairo on Thursday for a new round of the Egyptian-mediated negotiations.

The Islamist movement Hamas seized power a year ago in the Gaza Strip, an impoverished sliver of land, ousting forces loyal to secular Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Witnesses and Hamas said Thursday's blast that levelled a house in Beit Lahiya was caused by an Israeli air strike, but the army denied any involvement, saying it could have been an accidental explosion.

The blast caused widespread devastation.

"The IDF (Israel army) has no connection whatsoever to the events the Palestinians are describing. Our air force and land forces did not operate at that time," spokeswoman Major Avital Leibowitz told AFP.

Hamas's Al-Aqsa television channel said the house belonged to a local commander of the armed wing of the Islamist movement, and added that he was not at home at the time.

Many of the victims belonged to one family, said Muawiya Hassanein who heads the Gaza emergency services.

"We blame this crime on the Israeli occupation," Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu said in Gaza City. "We are used to Israel not admitting to its crimes."

Another Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, told Al-Aqsa: "The enemy must pay the price. We will not remain passive after this horrible crime."

Two Gaza militants were killed by Israeli forces earlier on Thursday in operations before the house blast and a clash after the explosion, Palestinian emergency services said.

One militant who fired at Israel was killed in an air strike near Khan Yunis and another died in a firefight with Israeli troops in the Beit Lahiya area, they said.

The Israeli military confirmed the air strike and said soldiers fired on a group of Palestinians who approached the fence separating Israel from Gaza, hitting one.

At least 501 people, nearly all Palestinians and the majority of them Gaza militants, have been killed since peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian leadership resumed last November, according to an AFP count.

That tally does not include the dead in Thursday's house blast.

There have been several cases in the past when militants accidentally set off deadly blasts while assembling makeshift explosive devices.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080612/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgaza;_ylt=Aggy3HoVYzoJdhuV5pK0scis0 NUE

[BartonX]

It neverceases to amaze me how these boot licking pricks and our state department and the media report the statements that the cause of the trouble is Israel occupying the land!!!!

What a propaganda line that is! Even that fucked up Muslim Holy Book states the land clearly belongs to Israel. Gaza,,,,,,, this is the same geographic area the Giant Golliath hailed from, And if you want the account of how they lost all rights to that shitty sliver of real estate read the 3,000 year old account of what Israel's King David did to make it Israel's sole possession and the original inhabitors??? They were made extinct.

They call it the "West Bank", in the news. But here is some news. That is the area called Samaria and Judea. The area that caused these people to be called Jews. It is their fucking land all of it.

What you are watching on TV and reading about is the start of the wars called Armageddon. The cause of the final show down with all of the world being forced into a valley in Northern Israel is "God's rage", he is enraged over one particular thing: "They divided my land".

So if you want to be angry with George Bush over his real and only serious error be angry with him over his part in the evil "Roadmap for Peace", oh Bush wasn't alone he also had Israel's biggest enemy helping him Ehud Omert a Judas goat.

The boundaries of Iarael are from the River of Egypt (not the nile) on the south, to the Euphrates on the North (encompasses a full third of modern Syria). To the Great sea (Mediteranian and certainly all of Gaza), and to the east, much of the land along the east side of the Jordan river, it belongs to two of the tribes of Israel.

All of the know this but they are betting on the stupidity of the entire world to not know what the Bible or Qu'ran teaches. And that ignorance is the inevitable cause of your death and all of your family with you, for openers, whether it also condemns you and yours to the second eternal death remains to be seen. We are all sitting on a hill of dynanite and Israel is the fuse.......still want to let our leaders light it??? It is up to you.