Israel's security cabinet today agreed to continue military operations in Gaza but did not opt for a large-scale offensive in response to a spate of rocket attacks by Palestinian militants, political sources said.
Israeli armoured vehicles in the Gaza Strip near Kibbutz Mefalsim
They said the army would keep targeting rocket launching squads and try to prevent the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip from neighbouring Egypt. But no detailed plans for any major offensive were presented or discussed, the sources said.
Earlier today, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian gunman in the Gaza Strip today, Palestinian hospital officials said, hours after an Israeli man was killed by a rocket that militants fired at Israel.
The hospital officials said another militant was wounded in the Israeli attack in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. Both men were members of the governing Palestinian Hamas group, said Hamas sources.
An Israeli army spokesman said there as an attack on militants planting explosives near an area where its troops were operating in northern Gaza. Residents said they suspected Israeli forces fired a missile in the attack.
Yesterday, a rocket fired from Gaza killed an Israeli man in the town of Sderot. The 44-year-old factory welder was the second Israeli killed by a rocket from Gaza in less than a week, an unusually high toll.
Israeli forces and settlers quit Gaza last year, but the military renewed ground operations in the coastal strip after militants captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid in June.
Israel has killed more than 370 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began the offensive, hospital officials and residents say. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed.