Agence France-Presse,
An Israeli woman was killed in a rocket attack from Gaza late on Monday after Israel threatened to hit Hamas leaders and four Palestinian militants died in a new air raid on the lawless territory.
The 35-year-old woman died of her injuries shortly after the rocket hit the car she was driving in the southern Israeli border town of Sderot.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for the second time this week visited Sderot where he met local leaders and residents, who staged a protest outside the town hall against the government's failure to stop the rocket fire.
Palestinian militants fired a salvo of eight rockets towards Israel on Monday evening and a total of 15 rockets during the day, reaching a total of more than 110 fired since last week.
Monday's attacks came as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was meeting European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana who was in Sderot to discuss the escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has pounded Hamas targets across Gaza since last Wednesday in response to the increase in rocket fire, in raids that have killed 11 Palestinian civilians and 25 militants, mostly from Islamist movement Hamas.
In the latest strike on Monday night, Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a metal factory in Gaza City's Zeitoun district, wounding at least one person.
Earlier, four gunmen from the radical Islamic Jihad group were killed in a car in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya, medics and the Israeli army said.
After the security cabinet on Sunday gave the army the green light to ramp up operations, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Israel will kill exiled Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal “at the first opportunity”.
Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya could also be targeted, he warned.
Meshaal, who is based in Syria, survived a Mossad assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997. Haniya escaped an Israeli strike in Gaza in 2004 that killed Hamas's wheelchair-bound founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
In Gaza, a militant group loosely linked to president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction urged Palestinians abroad to “target Zionist interests to curb the Zionist aggression against our people.”
But Palestinian information minister Mustafa Barghuti called for a comprehensive truce with Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli air raids have come amid deadly clashes between Hamas and Abbas's secular Fatah faction that have driven the densely populated territory to the brink of civil war and threatened to derail any Middle East peace moves.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, the Israeli army on Monday confiscated equipment with four television and radio stations linked to Hamas, forcing them off the air.
The White House called on the Israeli military to show restraint but warned Hamas against firing rockets.
“We remain concerned about the violence and urge all sides to demonstrate appropriate restraint,” National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. “However, Hamas needs to stop firing rockets into Israel.”
Japan urged both Israel and the Palestinians to exercise restraint “to avoid further exacerbating the situation.”
Britain said it was “deeply concerned” about civilian Palestinian deaths as a result of Israeli strikes and called for a “complete halt” to both Israeli and Palestinian violence.
Russia condemned what it called “excessive and disproportionate” use of force by Israel and the Palestinian rocket attacks.
Deadly air strikes resumed last week after a six-month truce in the face of the upsurge in rocket fire that came amid the Hamas-Fatah fighting that killed 51 people in Gaza before a truce took effect on Saturday.
