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GAZA CITY,Gaza Strip-Israeli troops backed by tanks and bulldozers crossed into southern Gaza to strike at Palestinian militants on Thursday, a day after Israel’s defence minister said a broad operation inside the territory was inevitable.Four militants were killed and 12 people were wounded in the fiercest clash. Israel’s security cabinet on Wednesday rejected calls for a large-scale Gaza invasion. But the government has been under mounting public pressure to stop the crude Palestinian rockets that fall daily in southern Israel-including a projectile that struck the yard of a nursery school earlier this week.No one was hurt in that attack, but images of panicking parents rushing to collect their children from school have prompted renewed calls for military action.Early Thursday, troops and vehicles crossed into Gaza in what the army called a routine operation against militants that involved shootouts and an air strike.The sides provided conflicting reports of the deadly gunbattle in the southern town of Khan Younis.The army said troops inside Gaza opened fire at a group of militants who approached them, sparking an exchange of fire. Gaza’s Hamas administration said militants were targeted either by an Israeli tank shell or missile fire from the air.Dr. Muawiya Hassanin of the Palestinian Health Ministry reported shrapnel wounds consistent with heavy artillery fire.Ten Palestinian fighters were among the wounded, Hamas said.Later in the day,Palestinian militants said fighters in a pickup truck and jeep crashed through the fence on the Gaza-Israel border and attacked an Israeli army post.The army denied the border was breached or that a post was attacked.Israeli aircraft struck two cars in the area,the army said,but did not provide details.Palestinian attacks on southern Israel have wreaked panic among its southern population and provoked demands for retaliation.In lieu of a large-scale invasion of Gaza, Israel’s security cabinet threatened Wednesday to cut water, electricity and fuel supplies to the strip.Later in the day, however, Defence Minister Ehud Barak told a gathering of top defence officials that “there is recognition that in the end, Israel will have to operate inside the Gaza Strip,” participants at the meeting said.Israel has mounted such operations in the past, with casualties on both sides, but the large-scale military strikes have failed to quell the rocket fire.Israeli military experts have said that short of recapturing all of Gaza, there is no military solution to the rocket fire. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.Parents in the rocket-scarred Israeli town of Sderot kept their children home again Thursday, demanding better protection. Children have stayed away from school since the attack on the nursery school on Monday, the second day of the school year.In other news Thursday, a Palestinian policeman was shot dead by gunmen in the northern West Bank town on Jenin.Police said Akram Abu Sba, 40,was shot in the chest by Islamic Jihad militants after he stopped their car for a routine check.As in the days of Noah...
