Israel hits Gaza tunnels as US envoy due

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-28 17:27

GAZA - Israeli aircraft bombed smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border on Wednesday in a response to the killing of an Israeli soldier, violence that strained a fragile ceasefire before the arrival of a US peace envoy.

Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak speaks to reservists during a visit to the Tzeelim army base in southern Israel, January 27, 2009, in this picture released by Israel's Defence Ministry. [Agencies]

George W. Mitchell, US President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, planned to meet Israeli leaders later in the day and hold talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

Western diplomats said he would not meet officials of Hamas, the Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip and which the United States and European Union shun over its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Mitchell's mission follows a call by Obama for a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

But a surge of violence has threatened the separate ceasefires that Israel and Hamas put into effect on January 18 after the 22-day offensive that Israeli leaders launched with the declared aim of ending cross-border rocket attacks.

A bomb Palestinian militants planted near the Gaza Strip's border with Israel killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three other troops on Tuesday. A little-known Islamist group claimed responsibility.

Israeli fire then killed a Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer. An Israeli air strike seriously wounded a militant on a motorcycle who the military said was involved in the bombing attack.

Israel followed up those attacks by sending aircraft to bomb smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border. There were no reported casualties, but residents fled their homes in panic.

Smuggling

Hamas has used the tunnel network, heavily bombed by Israel during the war, to smuggle in weapons.

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