Eight Palestinians killed in Gaza offensive

Gaza City - Israel pressed its month-long offensive into the Gaza Strip on Thursday with eight Palestinians, including a 12-year-old boy, being killed in military strikes around Rafah in southern Gaza.

At least six of the dead were militants, although it was not known to which armed groups they belonged, Palestinian hospital and security officials said.

Twenty-six other people - six of them children - were wounded in the Israeli operations around Rafah, hospital officials said, adding that seven of the injured were in a critical state. Several women were among the wounded.

Anis Abu Awaad, the boy who died, was killed along with three militants in an air raid, while a tank shell killed two other militants early on Thursday, security officials said.

Another tank shell killed a member of Islamic Jihad, while a 50-year-old man died late morning when Israeli soldiers fired in a Rafah neighbourhood, hospital and security officials said.

Children continued to be caught by the violence. Two youngsters, Muhamed Abu Hassan, aged 4, and his six-year-old sister Rihem, were wounded late on Wednesday by Israeli tank fire during an incursion in the area of the Dahaniya airport on the outskirts of Rafah, hospital officials said.

The strikes near Rafah were part of Israel's massive offensive launched in Gaza on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants killed two soldiers and seized a third in a cross-border raid.

The military says the offensive is aimed at recovering the captured soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, and at stopping Palestinian armed groups from firing rockets into Israel.

The operation is Israel's first incursion into Gaza after the Jewish state left the strip last year after a 38-year occupation.

At least 160 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have died since Israel launched the operation, according to an AFP count.

The number of rockets fired by Palestinians from the strip has decreased significantly, but not halted completely.

On Wednesday, one Israeli was wounded when a rocket fired from Gaza hit Ashkelon, a city of 120 000 residents around eight kilometres north of the border.

Most rockets fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza have landed in Sderot, a town of 20 000 residents that lies a few kilometres east of the territory.

Thursday's deaths in Gaza bring to 5 309 the number of people killed since the start of the intifada in September 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to a separate AFP count.

By Sakher Abu El Oun