Israel launches Gaza air strikes Israeli air strike in Gaza - 17/5/07 A massive blast shook Gaza City in the Hamas office attack Israel's aircraft have struck a number of targets in Gaza after it vowed a severe response to rocket attacks on its soil.
A Hamas commander died in an attack on a car and another militant was killed in a housing unit, both in Gaza City.
A raid on a Hamas office also killed one person and injured at least 45.
The attacks came as efforts to end five days of fighting between rivals Hamas and Fatah again appeared to fail. At least 40 people have now died.
Correspondents say the rocket attacks into Israel appear to be an attempt to draw it into an internal Palestinian conflict.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah, on Thursday suddenly called off a trip to Gaza that had been billed as an effort to shore up the fourth Hamas-Fatah ceasefire in five days.
Officials said he might now travel from Ramallah in the West Bank on Friday.
The BBC's Magdi Abdelhadi says control of the security forces appears to have been the trigger for the latest factional fighting but that it has now developed a momentum of its own.
Armed supporters on the ground may no longer be paying attention to orders from their political leadership, he adds.
On Thursday, US President George W Bush said both he and visiting UK Prime Minister Tony Blair were urging all parties to work for peace.
Series of strikes
Israel has confirmed three air strikes in Gaza.
One destroyed the second floor of a two-storey building belonging to the Executive Force, a militia force with the task of maintaining security in Gaza.
Hamas's armed wing threatened to renew suicide bombings in Israel after the strike.
The second Israeli air attack targeted a car carrying militants in Gaza City, Israel's military said. A Hamas official told Associated Press news agency one senior commander was killed and another wounded.
One Hamas militant was killed in the third attack - on a housing unit for security guards of a senior Hamas official.
Palestinian officials say there was a fourth attack on a vehicle in the southern Gaza Strip late in the day in which three people were killed but Israel has not confirmed this.
Israeli tanks are also reported to have moved a few hundred metres into the eastern Gaza Strip near the former settlement of Dugit, but again Israel has not confirmed this.
However Israeli military officials said earlier there were no plans for a ground attack.
After Israeli air strikes on Hamas facilities in Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian militants fired rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot.
The BBC's Middle East correspondent Tim Franks, who is in Sderot, says many people there are demanding the Israeli military take robust action inside Gaza.
'Shameful'
On Thursday morning, factional gun battles broke out in the southern Gaza town of Rafah during a funeral march for a slain Hamas man.
A pro-Fatah gunman was said to have been killed.
Fighting between Mr Abbas's Fatah and the Islamist Hamas threatens a hard-won unity government they formed in March.
Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti - one of the Palestinian cabinet's independent members - described the violence as shameful.
"They keep making agreements, and then they violate it within minutes," he told the BBC.
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