Gaza City: Five Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip today, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to keep up raids against gunmen in the Hamas-run territory.

In the first attack, Raad Abu Foull, 43,a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees militant group, was killed with his wife as they drove in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, medics said. The military confirmed hitting a car transporting a "rocket-manufacturing cell".

A second strike tonight targeted a car in the northern Gaza Strip that was carrying members of the radical Islamic Jihad movement, killing two of them, medical sources said.
However, the blast also hit a cart travelling behind the car, killing the woman who was driving it and seriously wounding her passenger, a child. Two pedestrians were also hurt.
The Palestinians slammed the raids on Gaza which have killed 29 people in three days and appealed to Israel s main ally the United States to intervene to preserve renewed peace efforts.

"The Israeli raids and military escalations aim to deliver a blow to the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations," Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for president Mahmud Abbas, told AFP.
A day after US President George W Bush ended a visit to the region during which he predicted the two sides would sign a peace treaty within a year, Abu Rudeina called on Washington to "intervene rapidly to prevent a further deterioration that may spin out of control, and to preserve the historical chance for peace."

The United States urged Israel to avoid the loss of innocent life in the Gaza Strip, but defended the Jewish state's right to strike against Islamic militants.

Source : PTI