Israeli military aircraft struck two Gaza Strip towns this morning in an offensive ordered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon following cross-border rocket salvoes by Palestinian militants.
No one was hurt in the predawn strikes, which came hours after Mr Sharon beat off a leadership challenge by hawks in Israel's ruling Likud party who are upset at his removal of soldiers and settlers from Gaza after 38 years of occupation.
In Beit Hanoun, a town on the Gaza border often used for Palestinian rocket launches, Israeli missiles destroyed two bridges, witnesses said. The Israeli army said the bridges were being used by militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon casts his ballot at the Likud Central Committee meeting
Minutes later, another air strike razed a money-changer's office and an academy in Khan Younis used by gunmen from the Palestinian faction Fatah. The army accused the money changer of working with Hamas militants, but locals said he was from Fatah.
Mr Sharon's main Likud rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, asked the party's Central Committee yesterday to bring forward a primary election that might have unseated 77-year-old Mr Sharon.
But the motion lost by a vote of 51.3 per cent to 47.6 per cent, averting the possibility of early national elections and of Mr Sharon leaving the party he co-founded in the 1970s to create a centrist bloc capitalising on broad support for the Gaza plan.
Losing the Central Committee vote is a blow to Mr Netanyahu, a former prime minister who quit the cabinet in August to mount his leadership challenge after warning that the pullout would turn Gaza into a "terrorist base".
Mr Sharon, who once championed the Jewish settlers' cause but is now reviled by them as a traitor, still faces a threat of defeat by Mr Netanyahu in a Likud primary on schedule for April, ahead of general elections that must be held by November 2006.
Mr Sharon has tried to mollify hardliners by vowing that Israel will never give up large settlement blocs in the West Bank, where 245,000 Jews live isolated from 2.4 million Palestinians.