Israeli response kills 3 in Gaza

GAZA CITY -- An Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday shortly after two rockets were fired into Israel from the area, Palestinian doctors said.

The Israeli Army said it had targeted militants who had launched the rockets. They had hit the southern city of Ashkelon just as Israel's truce with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas took hold. One person was lightly wounded by a rocket, police said.

The Palestinian doctors said that the three people killed in the airstrike were civilians and that one militant and two other civilians were wounded.

Condemning the killing, the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Hamas Islamist group that is sworn to destroying Israel, urged the world to focus again on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict following the truce in Lebanon.

``The Palestinian cause is the fundamental cause in the region," Haniyeh said in a statement. ``Calm, stability, and peace cannot be achieved in the region unless the Palestinian people regain their rights."

An Israeli offensive in Gaza to recover a captured soldier and stop Palestinians firing rockets has been overshadowed by the conflict with Hezbollah, which has fired thousands of missiles during the fighting since July 12.

The army said the rockets fired from Gaza yesterday were Russian-made Katyushas, similar to those used by Hezbollah. Palestinian militants have rarely fired such rockets before, relying on their homemade Qassam rockets.

The Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility for the attack. Rocket fire from Gaza had sharply diminished since the start of Israel's conflict with Hezbollah.

Also yesterday, Palestinian gunmen kidnapped two foreign journalists working for Fox News Channel in Gaza, a witness and the US television network said.

A Fox spokeswoman in New York named the two journalists as correspondent Steve Centanni, an American, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, from New Zealand.

A Fox news report said the network did not know who had seized them but that ``negotiations were underway to secure their release."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction.

The witness said two vehicles blocked the journalists' transmission truck in the center of Gaza City and a masked man put a gun to a bodyguard's head, forcing him to the ground.

The kidnappers then sped away with the two journalists.

Palestinian police stopped and searched cars. A spokesman for Hamas condemned the kidnapping.

Similar incidents in the past in Gaza have ended with the release, usually within hours, of kidnapped foreign journalists or aid workers.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the men to be freed, the Associated Press reported.

``We are gravely concerned about our colleagues' safety and call for their immediate and unconditional release," said executive director Joel Simon. ``These are well-established journalists who are not participants in the conflict. They should be treated accordingly and freed."

Several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza in recent months with their abductors demanding jobs from the Palestinian Authority or the release of people from Palestinian jails. All those kidnapped have been freed within hours without harm.