Israel kills Palestinian militant in Gaza

Gaza, Nov 24: Israeli forces backed by tanks shot dead a Palestinian militant in clashes in Gaza today and the government said its assaults would end only if gunmen stopped attacking the Jewish state from the strip.

Two Israeli soldiers were slightly wounded in fighting in northern Gaza when gunmen detonated an explosive device near troops, the army said.

The latest ground and air offensive, about a week old, has sought to curb an upsurge of militant rocket fire at Israeli towns and villages along the border.

The governing Hamas Islamist movement said the dead militant was a cameraman from the faction's armed wing. He filmed Hamas fighters in action.

Palestinian factions late on yesterday offered a limited ceasefire by saying they would stop firing rockets if Israel halted military action in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

The offer did not include suicide bombings and Israel swiftly rejected it.

''If the Palestinian terror factions, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, stop terror activities from the Gaza Strip, Israel would have no reason or incentive to operate in Gaza,'' Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said today.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Rudwan said there would be no calm while Israel kept up its raids.

''If the aggression stops and if massacres and the killing stops, it would be natural for the rockets to return to their resting place,'' Rudwan said.

Israel launched its offensive in late June after gunmen abducted a soldier in a cross-border raid from Gaza.

The objective was then broadened to target rocket-launching squads, who have killed two Israelis this month. Militants say the rockets are a response to army assaults.

Israel has killed nearly 400 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began the offensive, hospital officials and residents say. Three soldiers have been killed.

In a sign of progress in efforts to arrange an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been in Cairo to discuss Egyptian mediation efforts for a swap.

Meshaal held ''positive'' discussions with a senior Egyptian security official yesterday, a Hamas member said.

In violence in Gaza yesterday, a 57-year-old Palestinian grandmother blew herself up near soldiers. Three soldiers were slightly wounded.

Reuters