Israeli helicopter gunships have hit a Hamas-linked media office and a metal foundry in the Gaza Strip in apparent retaliation for attacks by the Palestinian militant group that killed three Israelis.  

Witnesses said three missiles slammed into the Gaza City premises of al-Jeel, a pro-Hamas journal, late on Monday. Five Palestinians were hurt, medics said. The blast shattered the windows of other press offices in the building and spewed debris onto the street.

Minutes later, a second air strike destroyed a metal foundry in nearby Nusseirat refugee camp, a bastion of militants waging a 3 1/2-year-old Palestinian revolt. Israel said the foundry had manufactured arms for Hamas. There were no casualties.

Monday's strikes came hours after Hamas rockets fired from Gaza into the Jewish state claimed lives for the first time -- a toddler and a man -- in a surge of violence ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned 2005 pullback from Gaza.

"Who is watching over (our children)? Nobody. That's my message to the prime minister," said Yitzhak Ohayon, father of three-year-old Afik who was slain by the salvo on Sderot town.

On Sunday, Hamas and militants from Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction used a tunnel to bomb an army post in central Gaza and kill an Israeli soldier. The two attacks prompted Sharon to convene security chiefs and plan retaliation.

Sharon also told a parliamentary committee he was determined to press ahead with his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of the 120 in the West Bank.

Media offices braced for Israeli strikes

Wise to the cycle of Middle East violence, many of the Gaza media building's staffers were deployed outdoors on Monday night -- a move they said may have spared them more serious injury.

"We were in our car, in anticipation of (Israeli) attacks," television sound mixer Tamer al-Jamal said. "Then there was a huge explosion, and debris and glass flew everywhere. I was wounded by flying glass into my cheek and forehead."

The Israeli army called al-Jeel "a communication center which maintained constant contact with terrorists (and) through which Hamas claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks."

Al-Jeel owner Mustafa al-Sawaf dismissed the army's charges as "a pretext to cover up for the continued Israeli crimes (against Palestinians)."

Hamas has vowed to bloody Israeli troops and settlers in Gaza, and press its campaign against the Jewish state itself after they leave. Sharon's critics in Israel say he fanned militant hostility by pushing for unilateral withdrawal. Israel's cabinet approved the plan on June 6. On Monday, Sharon said settlers who wanted to leave as early as "tomorrow morning" could get advance compensation payment from the state.

"They (settlers) will not be held hostage," Israeli media quoted Sharon as saying in reference to a second cabinet vote due in nine months on whether to begin evacuation of the 7,500 Jews in Gaza, which is home to over 1.3 million Palestinians.

Early on Monday, soldiers shot dead a Palestinian truck driver near Gaza's Gush Katif checkpoint, medics said. A Palestinian was killed near the Gaza settlement of Morag, Palestinian sources said. The army said he was a gunman.

Israeli forces also demolished 17 buildings in al-Qarara, the Gaza village nearest to Sunday's blast site. Military sources said at least two of the buildings had been used as cover for militants who tunneled under the army base and mined it.

(China Daily via agencies, June 29, 2004)