Israeli killed in Palestinian rocket attack

JERUSALEM, May 27 (Reuters) An Israeli man died in a Hamas rocket attack from the Gaza Strip today and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged to press ahead with military action to halt the salvoes, saying ''no one involved in terror'' was immune.

The rocket slammed into the southern town of Sderot a day after an Israeli air strike killed five militants from the Islamist Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.

A 36-year-old man was killed in the rocket attack and another person wounded, the Zaka emergency service said. He was the second Israeli fatality in the nearly two-week-old surge in violence, with no end in sight to the cross-border bloodshed.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the strike.

More than 220 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza since May 15, the Israeli military said.

Over the same period more than 40 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed in Israeli aerial assaults.

Olmert's cabinet held its weekly meeting today. He has faced calls from members of his government and residents of Sderot for wider military action in Gaza, including a ground offensive.

''No one involved in terror has immunity -- pure and simple,'' Olmert reiterated in broadcast remarks at the cabinet session.

His comments appeared to suggest that Hamas political leaders -- regarded by Israel as giving the green light to rocket attacks -- might also be targeted.

''We are not bound by any timetable in this matter,'' Olmert said. ''We will decide where, how and to what extent we act.'' HANIYEH'S HOME Israeli aircraft have twice attacked guard huts near the Gaza home of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader.

The Israeli military said Haniyeh was not a target of the strikes. But Hamas officials have said the attacks were warnings from Israel that he could be marked for assassination.

Israel also detained Wasfi Kabha, a Hamas minister in the Palestinian cabinet, in the occupied West Bank yesterday.

Two days earlier it seized Hamas's Education Minister Naser al-Shaer and 32 other officials in the West Bank. Washington voiced misgivings about the detentions but said Israel had a right to defend itself.

The recent surge of violence has dashed hopes for a renewed truce called for by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose secular Fatah group is part of a unity government with Hamas.

''Our message to the Zionist enemy is that you have no future on our land,'' Abu Ubaida al-Jarrah, chief commander of Hamas's Executive Force, said in a broadcast on the group's radio station during a funeral for the fighters killed yesterday.

Abbas wants a ceasefire with Israel as a step towards reviving peace talks, but Hamas has resisted his call. Israeli officials doubt any truce will last if Hamas can continue smuggling arms into Gaza from Egypt.

Although they are partners in government, Hamas and Fatah have fought bitter internal battles in Gaza in recent weeks that have killed some 50 Palestinians, and tension remains high.

REUTERS SG RK1441