MIDDLE EAST:US president George Bush yesterday called Israeli settlement expansion an "impediment" to the success of revived peace efforts and urged the Jewish state to follow through on its pledge to dismantle unauthorised settler outposts.
Speaking less than a week before his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank, Mr Bush voiced optimism over the prospects of securing an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of 2008, a goal set at last November's Annapolis conference that has been viewed with some scepticism.
Mr Bush said he would use his trip to keep up pressure on both sides, including making clear to Israelis his concern about continued Jewish settlement activity.
"I will talk about Israeli settlement expansion, about how that is, that can be, you know, an impediment to success," he said.
"The unauthorised outposts, for example, need to be dismantled, like the Israelis said they would do."
Meanwhile, the Israeli army killed at least four Palestinian gunmen and five civilians in air and ground strikes yesterday in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Hamas said one of its militants was killed and three were wounded by an Israeli missile in the central Gaza Strip after they had tried to fire mortar bombs into Israel.
Another was killed and three wounded by a missile attack on a training camp near the southern town of Rafah.
An earlier incursion by Israeli troops near the town of Khan Younis was a hunt for militants who fire short-range rockets into Israel, the Israeli army said.
One rocket fired yesterday landed north of the Israeli city Ashkelon, 17km (11 miles) from Gaza, - the furthest a Palestinian rocket has ever penetrated into Israel, the army said. A second landed in the garden of a house in Sderot.
After the Ashkelon attack, which caused no casualties or damage, Israeli warplanes bombed three buildings in the Gaza Strip, causing extensive damage.
Two of the buildings were linked to the militant group Islamic Jihad and the third to Hamas, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
Palestinian witnesses and medical officials said an Israeli tank fired at a house near Khan Younis, killing an Islamic Jihad militant outside.
The shell also killed his mother, a sister and two brothers, who were in the house at the time.
Another shell wounded at least seven schoolchildren between the ages of eight and 10, hospital officials said. Medics said an Israeli tank fired the shell into a crowd. The Israeli army said it was checking the report. - ( Reuters)