Hamas warns of hitch in Gaza truce after new bloodshed

TRUCE JEOPARDY: Hamas leader has said renewed rocket fire from both sides has stalled peace-talks. (Getty Images)

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has warned that there had been a hitch in plans to announce a truce in and around Gaza after rocket fire by Palestinian militants drew renewed Israeli air strikes on the war-battered territory.

The Damascus-based leader-in-exile of the Islamist movement that controls Gaza did not elaborate on the nature of the problem but said he no longer expected Egyptian mediators to announce a deal on Sunday as originally planned.

"The Egyptians had told us that the announcement of this truce would be made on Sunday but there has been a complication and we don't know if that date will be kept to," Meshaal told AFP in the Qatari capital where he had flown in from a visit to Libya.

Meshaal's number two Mussa Abu Marzuq had told the Egyptian state news agency MENA late on Thursday that the mediators would announce an agreement on an 18-month truce within 48 hours after Hamas gave it its endorsement.

But there has still be no reaction from Israel where an inconclusive general election held on Tuesday has created what threatens to be a prolonged period of political uncertainty.

That uncertainty was compounded by a fresh bout of tit-for-tat violence in and around Gaza.

Gaza militants fired Qassam rockets and a mortar round into southern Israel, causing no casualties, the army said.

A spokesman said the rockets had exploded near the southern city of Sderot - a frequent target of attacks from the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Israel responded with an air strike on the southern Gaza Strip that killed a militant and with other air raids on suspected smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt.

"There was an air strike in Khan Yunis against terror operatives who were planning an attack inside Israel," an Israeli military spokesman said.

Palestinian medics said one person was killed and three were wounded in the raid in southern Gaza, with witnesses saying two fighters from the Popular Resistance Committees, a small militant group allied with Hamas, were targeted.

Early Saturday, six people were wounded when two Israeli air strikes hit targets in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

One strike targeted a workshop in the Jabaliya refugee camp, wounding six people, they said. A second air strike hit an open area in the camp, causing no injuries or damage.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the two raids, saying they had been directed at "weapons-producing sites in Jabaliya refugee camp".

"It was also a response to the two Qassam rockets and a mortar shell which were fired at Israel" on Friday, she said.

The army says more than 40 rockets have been fired into southern Israel by militants since January 18, when Israel and Hamas declared ceasefires to end a three-week war that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

In the same period, Israel has carried out a number of air strikes on the densely populated, aid-dependent enclave.

Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory a year and a half ago, ousting loyalists of Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Ending the blockade has been a key Hamas demand and the reason it has given for firing rockets and mortar rounds into Israel after an earlier six-month truce expired in December.

Omar Suleiman, Cairo's pointman for truce talks with Israel, has met separately with Israeli and Palestinian officials to negotiate a lasting truce.

On Friday, Egyptian newspapers quoted him as saying Cairo would discuss the truce proposal with Israel next week, and that rocket fire on Israel was one of the issues blocking a deal.

Egypt's efforts have hit several hurdles -- one of which is the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was snatched by Gaza militants in June 2006 and is still being held.

Israel, which controls almost all Gaza's border crossings as well as its airspace and territorial waters, is insisting that the blockade will only be ended if Hamas frees Shalit.

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