BBC Israel launches Gaza raid The Israeli army is said to have attacked the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City and two police posts in central Gaza in an early morning raid.

Palestinian witnesses say F-16 fighter jets were seen flying low over the city followed by a huge explosion.

The attack is part of a series of retaliatory strikes following a Palestinian raid on a Gaza army post on Saturday which killed three Israeli soldiers.

The latest raid follows an incursion by Israeli tanks into Palestinian-controlled areas in the Gaza Strip in which a Palestinian policeman was killed and several people injured.

A Palestinian source said a four-storey building in the security complex at Gaza City had been completely destroyed. He said two police posts in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza had also been bombed.

In the earlier incursion into the Palestinian-ruled area of Rafah in southern Gaza the Israelis destroyed three security posts in a heavy gunbattle before withdrawing, ending the deepest incursion into the Palestinian territories for nearly a year.

Israeli strikes

Israeli tanks and bulldozers penetrated about three kilometres into the Palestinian-ruled areas of Rafah, in the Gaza Strip.

The Israelis fired tank shells as they demolished Rafah's main command headquarters.

The Israeli army had been caught off guard by the raid on their army base earlier on Saturday, seen as one of the most brazen attacks in the recent violence.

It was the first time that Palestinian gunmen successfully entered an Israeli army position and the BBC's correspondent Barbara Plett says two high-profile investigations have been ordered.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) said it carried out the attack which took place near the settlement of Gush Katif.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the two Palestinians broke into the base, opening fire with automatic rifles and throwing grenades.

The raid was followed by another attack in the West Bank, in which two Jewish settlers were killed and three others wounded after their car was ambushed by gunmen near Jerusalem.

The Arab television station, Al Jazirah, reported that the attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Brigade, a group connected to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.

A man and a woman were killed while their father was critically wounded. Their two children - aged six months and two years - were lightly wounded.

The shootings took place on a road frequently used by Jewish settlers, who have made their homes on land the Palestinians see as their own.

Response

The radical Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the raid was in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

"This operation was in response to the aggressive, ugly war that the criminal [Israeli] government has continued against our people," the DFLP said in a statement.

A DFLP spokesman in Ramallah, Dahwood Talhami, told the BBC their aim was to be rid of what he called "Israel's colonial presence".

Mr Talhami said the DFLP had close relations with all Palestinian organisations but was not necessarily linked to Mr Arafat.

Since the Palestinian intifada began nearly a year ago, Palestinian activists have repeatedly targeted troops and settlers in Gaza.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001