Israel kills three in Gaza, hits rocket factories

GAZA, July 24 (Reuters) An Israeli shell exploded near a crowd of people outside an apartment building in the northern Gaza Strip today, killing at least three people and wounding several others, Palestinian witnesses said.

Israel has killed around 118 Palestinians in a nearly month-long offensive in Gaza to force militants to release a captured soldier and halt rocket fire on Israeli cities.

It was not immediately known whether the three dead were militants or civilians.

Today's incident took place in the Beit Lahiya neighbourhood near the Gaza-Israel border, where militants frequently fire rockets at Israel.

An army spokeswoman said she was checking the specific incident, but she said artillery rounds were fired today at Palestinian militants launching Qassam rockets into Israel from heavily populated civilian areas in northern Gaza.

''We have distributed leaflets warning civilians to leave areas from where Qassam rockets are fired. The terror organisations purposely fire Qassam rockets at Israel from areas that are crowded with civilians,'' an army spokeswoman said.

Earlier in the day, the Israeli army said Palestinian militants in northern Gaza fired at least six rockets into Israel, two of them landed near the coastal city of Ashkelon. Nobody was hurt in those attacks.

The Islamic Jihad militant group said it fired the two rockets at Ashkelon to mark a visit to the region by ''the Zionist Condoleezza Rice,'' the U.S. secretary of state.

''Let Rice go to hell,'' senior Hamas leader, Osama al-Muzaini, told Reuters.

Muzaini said Rice was coming to put political pressure on Arab leaders to back Israel in its war against Hizbollah in Lebanon.

Overnight, Israel bombed buildings the army said were being used by militants to make rockets. The army said it warned residents to leave the buildings before the air strikes to try to avoid civilian casualties.

One of the targeted warehouses was being used by Islamic Jihad to manufacture and store missiles and ammunition, the Israeli army said. Palestinian sources confirmed the owner of the house was an Islamic Jihad member.

Israel also hit a facility used by Hamas to make rockets, the army said.

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