Israel and Hamas Attacks Undermine Gaza Ceasefire

Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes today threatened to undermine efforts by the US Middle East envoy to reinforce a fragile Gaza ceasefire as he held talks with the leader of the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired a rocket into Israel late yesterday ? the first since the 18 January ceasefire ? and another today. No one was hurt.

Israeli aircraft struck in southern Gaza, hitting and wounding a man on a motorcycle, and attacking a metal workshop that the Israeli military said was a weapons factory. Two militants and 10 youths were injured, medical workers said.

The violence provided a sombre backdrop for talks between George Mitchell and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Mitchell, who was in Jerusalem yesterday, said it "was of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated".

The latest hostilities came despite separate ceasefires called by Israel and Hamas that ended a 22-day Israeli offensive in which 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, died, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. Israel put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.

Mitchell said on Tuesday that any durable truce between Israel and Hamas must end smuggling into Gaza and reopen border crossings controlled by Israel to relieve its economic blockade. Half of the 1.5 million people in the territory depend on food aid.

Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, told Mitchell that Israel would object to reopening any crossings into Gaza ? except to allow the flow of vital aid ? until an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in a crosws-border raid in 2006 was freed.

"We don't intend to open the crossings before Gilad Shalit returns home," Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli cabinet minister, said.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, today launched an emergency appeal seeking more than $600m (?420m) to assist the rebuilding effort in Gaza.

"Help is indeed needed urgently," Ban said at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. "The civilian population suffered greatly during three weeks of military operations. More than one-third of the 6,600 deaths and injuries were children and women."

In Qatar yesterday, Hamas's supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, said the group would not link the opening of crossings to the release of the Israeli soldier. Hamas wants Israel to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

Mitchell's trip comes just a week after the US president, Barack Obama, took office, and signals the new US administration's willingness to make a determined diplomatic push early on.

Mitchell, a former US Senate majority leader and a broker of the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday peace agreement, said he would make recommendations to Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, after consultations in the region and with European leaders.

Mitchell did not meet officials from Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the US, the European Union and Israel.