Israeli tanks roll into southern Gaza

GAZA - Israeli forces pushed into the Gaza Strip today after threatening a major offensive to try to bring home a soldier captured by Palestinian militants, the army said.

Tanks and armoured vehicles entered the territory near the southern town of Rafah less than a year after Israel pulled thousands of soldiers and settlers from the territory following 38 years of occupation.

An army spokeswoman confirmed the troops had moved into Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Meanwhile, aircraft struck at three bridges on key roads in what the army said was an attempt to stop militants moving the captive. A helicopter strike on a power plant plunged much of Gaza into darkness.

Israel threatened to launch an offensive into Gaza following the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid on Monday by three Palestinian factions, including the armed wing of the governing Hamas Islamist group.

The hostage crisis has brought relations between Israel and the Palestinians to their lowest point since Israel quit Gaza last year.

It is a major test for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, elected in March on a platform of carrying out a similar withdrawal from parts of the occupied West Bank, another territory captured in a 1967 war and land which Palestinians would like to see as part of an independent state.

With tension growing today, Hamas reached a political deal with the more moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, but rejected any suggestion the plan meant it recognised Israel and had dropped its vow to destroy it.

Israel dismissed the manifesto, penned by Palestinians in its jails, as "double-speak" aimed at lifting a US-led aid embargo on the Palestinian Authority.

Inside Gaza for the talks, Abbas, who is usually based in the West Bank, is unable to leave because Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory.

As tanks and troops massed outside Gaza, Palestinian gunmen fanned out behind barricades and in foxholes. Tank fire into southern Gaza lightly wounded one gunman.

Israeli troops have made several brief incursions into Gaza in recent weeks, but nothing on the scale of today's operation.

"We are trying to make it clear that we will take the necessary steps to ensure his (Shalit's) safe return," said Israeli Captain Jacob Dallal.

"Much still depends on the Palestinians."

Hoping to head off a major flare-up in more than 5 years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, Egypt has been trying to broker Shalit's release. So has France, as the 19-year-old conscript has French as well as Israeli citizenship.

But mediators were close to calling it quits.

"It will be a few hours yet until we know it is hopeless," one mediator told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

There has been little word on Shalit's fate. Hamas' armed wing offered to release details if Israel frees Palestinian minors and women held in its prisons, but such a swap was ruled out by Olmert.

Israeli media said there was concern Shalit may have already been spirited out of Gaza by his captors.

Militant groups said Monday's raid was in response to the killing of 14 Palestinian civilians in Israeli air strikes in Gaza against militants behind cross-border rocket attacks.

Hamas' armed wing this month called off a truce it had largely followed since the start of 2005. The group carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings against Israelis during a Palestinian uprising.

- REUTERS