Palestinians launch raid from Gaza into Israel

RAFAH, Gaza Strip, June 25 (Reuters) Palestinian militants today launched their first deadly raid into Israel from Gaza since an Israeli pullout last year, killing two Israelis in an assault on a military post in which several attackers also died.

A strong Israeli military response to the raid, claimed by the armed wing of the governing Hamas group and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) as an ''earthquake reaction'' to recent air strikes that killed 14 Palestinian civilians, seemed likely.

Immediately after the incident, a small Israeli force crossed into Gaza to carry out searches.

''The attack targeted the Israei military and according to the information we have so far, the Israelis killed were soldiers,'' a Hamas official said in Damascus.

''This was a very serious Hamas terrorist attack,'' Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in broadcast remarks.

''Israel sees the Palestinian Authority headed by Chairman Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) and the Palestinian government responsible for the incident, with everything that implies,'' he said.

Tunnelling across the fenced frontier, militants fired ocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons in a dawn operation against an army post near the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

An Israeli military source said seven gunmen infiltrated through a tunnel that militants had dug and attacked an armoured personnel carrier.

In an ensuing gun battle, two Israelis were killed along with several of the attackers, an Israeli security source said.

Israeli rescue workers at the scene said at least three militants were dead. The PRC said two gunmen were killed.

Israel Radio quoted medics as saying four people wounded in the incident were taken to hospital.

Witnesses said that in the aftermath of the gun battle, two Israeli tanks backed by a helicopter crossed into an empty field in the Gaza Strip at the scene of the attack. The army said it was a ''limited entry'' to search the area.

Army Radio reported that Israeli generals had convened to discuss a possible large-scale ground operation in response to the raid.

ISRAELI ASSASSINATION Israeli air strikes, amid daily cross-border rocket launchings from Gaza, have killed 20 Palestinians in the past two weeks, 14 of them civilians.

Hamas and the PRC said their assault was also in response to the Israeli assassination this month of PRC leader Jamal Abu Samhadana.

Hamas, which heads the Palestinian government, ended a 16-month-old truce with Israel on June 9 after seven members of one Palestinian family were killed on a Gaza beach during a day of heavy Israeli shelling.

Hamas has blamed Israel for those deaths. Israel has denied responsibility.

Israel completed a withdrawal of Jewish settlers and soldiers from Gaza in September after 38 years of occupation. No Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since then.

Hamas, a militant movement sworn to Israel's destruction, came to power in March after winning a parliamentary election in January.

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