Monday May 21, 4:00 AM    

*Eight killed as Israel launches new strike on Gaza
*

Eight people were killed in a new Israeli air raid in Gaza on Sunday
just hours after Israel's security cabinet gave the army the go-ahead to
ramp up operations against Palestinian militants.

At least 12 people were also wounded in the raid against the home of a
Hamas leader and member of the Palestinian parliament, Khalil al-Haya,
medics said.

The White House called on Israel's military to show restraint in Gaza,
while warning Hamas against firing rockets at Israeli targets.

"We remain concerned about the violence and urge all sides to
demonstrate appropriate restraint," National Security Council spokesman
Gordon Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas, where President George W. Bush
is relaxing at his ranch.

"However, Hamas needs to stop firing rockets into Israel," he added.

The latest air strike came as life in Gaza had begun slowly to return to
normal after the rival Hamas and Fatah factions implemented their latest
ceasefire in a bid to halt street battles that killed at least 50 people
in the past week.

The dead and injured in Sunday night's strike were mostly members of
Haya's family and his neighbours but he was away from his home in
eastern Al-Shujaya neighbourhood of Gaza City at the time of the attack,
the medics said.

Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas, denounced the
"terrible crime carried out by the Zionists against a member of
parliament," and called on the international community to intervene to
"stop this dangerous aggression which is heightening tension."

The strike came soon after Israel's powerful security cabinet gave the
army the green light to intensify operations against Palestinian
militants in Gaza, stopping short, however, of ordering a ground assault.

A senior government official said the measures would include increased
air strikes and "operations targeting the military chiefs of terrorist
groups as well as activists firing rockets" into Israel.

The army had been given the go-ahead to "increase operations to reduce
the firing of rockets and to knock out the terrorist infrastructure
responsible for the firings," a cabinet statement said.

"The operations will concentrate at this stage on Hamas and Islamic
Jihad, which are responsible for the escalation," it added.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told public radio at the end of the meeting
that there was no "miracle solution" that would end the rocket fire.

"Each solution is complex and can have many consequences and this is why
we have chosen a graduated" response, Olmert said.

The prime minister and some military top brass are known to oppose a
ground assault, believing it will merely exacerbate the situation.

The last Israeli ground incursion in Gaza last year lasted five months,
killed some 400 Palestinians, wreaked massive infrastructure damage, but
failed to halt rocket fire.

Before dawn on Sunday, three Hamas militants were killed when their car
was bombed during Israeli air strikes, which also hit metal workshops
Israel says produced makeshift rockets fired on its territory.

The strikes, which resumed last week in the face of a barrage of rocket
fire on southern Israel after a six-month ceasefire, have so far killed
12 civilians and 19 Hamas militants.

More than 100 rockets have crashed inside Israel over the past week,
wounding 16 civilians, most of them lightly, and sending hundreds
fleeing Sderot, police said.

Residents of Gaza, meanwhile, cautiously ventured out of doors, stores
and schools reopened and taxis returned to the streets as snipers
abandoned rooftop posts, dismantled checkpoints and released hostages.

The bloodshed between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas movements has
threatened the collapse of their unity cabinet and driven one of the
world's most densely populated places to the brink of civil war.

But Gazans -- worn down by the bloodshed and a crippling Western aid
freeze -- were wary that the fifth truce in a week, albeit the only one
actually implemented on ground, would last.

"This truce is nothing but a time-out that gives the two camps a moment
of respite and the fighting can resume at any moment," said Adnan
al-Khurubi, a doctor, as he returned to work in Gaza City.