BOTH ISRAELI officials and Hamas representatives yesterday expressed a desire to maintain the precarious Gaza Strip ceasefire despite the most serious upsurge in violence since the Egyptian-brokered truce went into effect in June.
Six Palestinian fighters were killed when Israeli special forces entered the Strip late on Tuesday night to destroy a tunnel being constructed by militants. An Israeli military spokesman said the tunnel was to be used by the Islamic Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last year, for an imminent attempt to kidnap an Israeli soldier.
A Palestinian fighter was killed confronting the Israeli troops and five Palestinian militants preparing to fire mortars were killed in an Israeli air strike.
Six Israeli soldiers were wounded. The troops left Gaza after the tunnel was destroyed.
Some forty rockets and mortars were fired by Palestinians into southern Israel yesterday. No one was hurt but a number of residents were treated for shock. Two rockets landed in Ashkelon, 16km north of the Gaza Strip.
Both sides blamed each other for the upsurge in violence.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the rocket attacks were in "response to Israel's massive breach of the truce".
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni said Israel had to act to protect its citizens. It had agreed to a truce but did not agree that Hamas could dig tunnels, either for smuggling weapons or for carrying out terrorist attacks or kidnapping soldiers. But defence minister Ehud Barak stressed that Israel had no intention of ending the truce and had an interest in maintaining the quiet.
Mr Barhoum said that Hamas was in contact with Egypt in an effort to restore calm.
Although militants have fired rockets sporadically into Israel during the five-month ceasefire both sides have benefited from relative quiet after almost daily clashes in the year after Hamas took over control of Gaza from its rival Fatah.
In the run-up to the February election the Israeli government will be eager to avoid any repetition of rocket attacks from Gaza which would only boost the right- wing opposition, which has criticized the ceasefire with Hamas as providing the militant group with breathing space to build up its military capabilities ahead of the almost inevitable next round of conflict.