Israel kills 6 Palestinians during Gaza clashes

GAZA—Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, at least three of them Hamas militants, during a Gaza Strip raid on Thursday, pressing a nearly four-month offensive launched after a soldier was abducted, witnesses said.
Hamas's armed wing responded by firing six make-shift rockets into Israel. No one was injured. The rockets were the first fired by Hamas militants in over a month but other militant groups have kept up such attacks.
Hamas controls the Palestinian government and has rebuffed international pressure to recognize Israel, renounce violence and abide by interim peace deals.
Ahmed Youssef, a top political adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, called for a summit in Egypt between Hamas and the once-dominant Fatah faction of President Mahmoud Abbas over stalled efforts to form a unity government.
The worst internal fighting in a decade has stoked fears of civil war, and Abbas's aides said the president, who advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, might appoint an emergency government or call early elections.
On Thursday, a member of an Abbas-controlled intelligence service was killed by unknown gunmen, the latest in a string of assassinations in Gaza targeting security officials loyal to the moderate president.
Youssef said dissolving the Hamas-led government could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and stepped up attacks against the Jewish state.
"Either the Palestinian Authority collapses if the government is dissolved and we return to ... armed resistance, or we pursue the formation of a national unity government," Youssef said.
Hamas is sworn to Israel's destruction. Its armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings against Israelis after a Palestinian uprising began in 2000. Its last suicide bombing was in August 2004.—Agencies