Islamic Resistance Movement Palestine

Israeli attacks killed nine Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after the Islamic group claimed responsibility for its first suicide bombing in Israel in more than three years. Hamas' statement of "full responsibility" for the bombing Monday in the southern desert town of Dimona, which killed a 73-year-old Israeli woman, and the deadly Israeli response raised the likelihood of escalating conflict in the days ahead.

An Israeli warplane blew up a minivan carrying senior Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, prompting a rocket blitz from the Palestinian enclave that killed a middle-age student on a college campus in southern Israel. Four Palestinian civilians and 10 militants were killed in the escalation of aerial attacks, and the student's death brought new pressure on the Israeli government to launch a full-scale ground offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Cross-border hostilities between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip continued for a second day Thursday as Israeli airstrikes killed 15 Palestinians, including five young boys, and a Gaza-launched rocket struck a home in the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon. The airstrikes brought the total Palestinian death toll to 29 during the two-day burst of violence. In Israel, officials said that more than 60 Kassam and Grad rockets had been launched from Gaza over the two days.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh emerged from weeks of hiding Friday to warn Israeli officials against an anticipated large-scale offensive to uproot the militant Islamic group from the Gaza Strip. "I tell the leaders of the occupation: This round will end in terrible failure just like all the other rounds failed," Haniyeh said at a mosque near his home in a Gaza City refugee camp. Early today, about 20 Israeli tanks entered the Gaza Strip, and clashes were reported around the town of Jabaleya.

As sunset approached Sunday, a steady stream of men walked the darkening streets toward Gaza City's Al Nafaq district to pay their respects to the Atallah family. In an open-air enclosure up a side street, dozens of mourners sat on plastic chairs. A loudspeaker blared a sermon lamenting the misfortunes of a family that lost six members in an Israeli airstrike. "I ask God to take them into heaven. I ask God to give their relatives patience," the imam said.

Within hours of the Israeli army's predawn withdrawal from the Gaza Strip on Monday, Hamas was declaring victory in its latest round of armed conflict with the Jewish state. To punctuate its point, more than a dozen rockets were launched during the day at nearby Israeli towns. The message: The two-day Israeli tank incursion that killed more than 60 Palestinians had failed to cripple the rocket-launching capability of Gaza's militants.

Fighting between Israeli forces and militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed 17 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers, medical officials and the army said. In the deadliest incident, Israeli strikes killed 12 people and wounded 20 in the Bureij refugee camp, said Muawiya Hassanein, chief of emergency services in the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. Residents said a helicopter fired at least four missiles, damaging two houses and a mosque.

Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday criticized former President Carter for planning to meet with leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy isn't a threat to them or U.S. support for Israel. The Democratic presidential candidate's comments to a group of Jewish leaders were his first on Carter's controversial meeting scheduled this week in Egypt. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen.

Former President Carter wrapped up his controversial Middle East tour Monday with an upbeat account of the militant Hamas movement's position on Israel, but with no apparent progress in promoting a cease-fire or bringing the Islamic group into peace efforts. Hamas turned down Carter's proposals for a one-month suspension of rocket attacks on Israel and a rapid prisoner exchange that would have transferred a captive Israeli soldier to Egypt. Israeli and U.S.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration explicitly warned former President Carter against meeting with leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls the Gaza Strip and is regarded by the U.S. as a terrorist group. Rice, speaking in Kuwait, said, "I just don't want there to be any confusion.