ISRAEL FIRES MISSILES INTO GAZA

Gaza Israeli helicopters carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip yesterday in an offensive to halt cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian terrorists two weeks after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the territory. Terrorists “will be hit again and again until they understand there are new rules to the game,” said Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz. Hours later, Apache helicopter gunships fired missiles at Fatah offices in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood, while others targeted Palestinian security offices in the southwest of the city and a building used by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Bureij refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip. There were no reports of casualties. Gen. Mofaz did not rule out an incursion back into Gaza, and said Israel could assassinate current political leaders of the biggest terrorist group Hamas just as it tracked down and killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz alRantissi in 2004. “Quiet means quiet,” Gen. Mofaz was quoted by the YNET media Web site as saying. “Until there is quiet, terrorist organizations will know no quiet. If [Hamas leaders] Mahmoud al-Zahar or Ismail Haniyah or others continue with rocket fire, we will send them to the same place as Rantissi and Yassin.” After Gen. Mofaz’s remarks, a political leader of Islamic Jihad said it and other terrorist groups had decided at a meeting to abide once again by an informal truce. But afterward, another Gaza rocket crashed inside Israel, causing no injury or damage.