Middle East News
Rocket hits Israeli shopping mall, Israeli raidS kills four grafs 9, 10 (Roundup)
By DPA
May 14, 2008, 17:12 GMT

Tel Aviv/Gaza - As US President George W. Bush opened a 48- hour visit to Israel Wednesday, violence which has hampered the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations he is sponsoring flared again in the Gaza Strip.

Fighting between Israeli ground troops and local militants in the southern and northern Gaza Strip killed at least four Palestinians and injured nine others Wednesday, hospital officials said.

The fighting erupted when Israeli troops crossed into southern Gaza in response to earlier mortar attacks from the area, and into northern Gaza after Palestinian gunmen attacked soldiers patrolling on the Israeli side of the nearby border, the military said.

Hours later, a Palestinian rocket fired from the Gaza Strip directly struck a shopping mall in the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, injuring at least 16 people, hospital officials said.

Five of the injured were in serious to moderate condition and at least 11 others were lightly wounded by shrapnel, said Leah Malul, a spokeswoman for Ashkelon's Barzilai hospital.

She said at least 20 additional Israelis were evacuated to the hospital for shock.

A mother and her toddler daughter were among the serious and moderately injured.

The rocket penetrated the roof of the shopping mall on the third floor, near a clinic housed on the floor, witnesses said. Some of the clinic's staff were said to be among the wounded. Television footage showed a large, gaping hole in the roof, and a large pile of concrete and metal rubble.

'Hamas' objective, stated objective, is the destruction of the state of Israel, and therefore the United States will stand strongly with Israel as well as stand strongly with the Palestinians who don't share their vision,' Bush told a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem, minutes before the rocket struck Ashkelon.

'We will not be able to tolerate continuous attacks against innocent civilians. We hope that we will not have to act against Hamas in other ways with the military power that Israel has not yet started to use in a serious manner in order to stop it,' Olmert said.

The Grad-type Katyusha rocket was fired from the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said. The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), in a statement e-mailed to the media, claimed responsibility for launching it.

The PRC, as well as the radical Islamic Jihad faction, have thus far refused to endorse efforts by Egypt to mediate a truce in Gaza. It said the rocket fired was a self-made or upgraded Nasser III.

'As a pillar of resistance in Palestine, the movement will not again accept a free or unilateral lull in the occupied Palestinian territories,' Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader based in Gaza, told reporters Wednesday.

'Israel wants to keep on its attacks and aggressions until the last moment and the Islamic Jihad, in return, will continue its resistance,' al-Batsh added.

Mo'aweya Hassanein, the chief of emergency at Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, said a militant and a civilian were killed in the clash near Jabaliya in northern Gaza.

Two militants, one of Hamas and the other of the Islamic Jihad, were earlier killed during the Israeli incursion in southern Gaza, east of the town of Khan Younis, both groups said.

The two Islamic armed groups said in a statement that their militants confronted the Israeli troops with locally-made mortar shells, roadside bombs and hand grenades.

A military spokeswoman said Israeli aircraft providing cover for the ground force launched two strikes at groups of militants involved in the fighting.

She said the incursion was prompted by the mortar and gunfire attacks from the area at Israeli soldiers and farmers in nearby Israel.