Sharon authorises army crackdown on militants

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Sunday he was giving Israel's army free rein to battle militants in Gaza, and the Palestinian leadership called for a halt to attacks on Israelis.

Israeli tank fire killed two Palestinians in Gaza, medics said, as a rash of violence dented peace hopes despite the election last week of Palestinian moderate Mahmoud Abbas as president.

The Israeli assault on Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza came as Israel Radio reported Sharon had ordered troops "to act immediately with no political or military restrictions" to halt repeated rocket fire into southern Israel on Sunday.

"I won't let this mad situation continue," Sharon told the mayor of Sderot, whose residents have threatened to launch a commercial strike on Monday in protest at the rocket attacks.

Sharon also told his cabinet the army had been "instructed to take any action needed without restriction to stop terror, and they will continue to do so... as long as the Palestinians do not lift a finger".

Sharon told ministers that at his ranch in southern Israel he could hear rockets landing in nearby towns. He demanded Palestinian police deploy in northern Gaza to stop the salvoes.

Israeli media said the army might consider resuming assassinations of top militant leaders and could set up "security zones" in Gaza to prevent mortar and rocket fire aimed at Israel or at Jewish settlements.

An Israeli tank shell hit a house in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza after dark, killing a 27-year-old man and his mother and seriously wounding his father, Palestinian medics said.

An Israeli military source said troops had fired twice in the area, once at Palestinians suspected of planting explosives and again at Palestinians who had been observing the troops and were suspected of plotting an attack.

The shooting came after militants fired repeated volleys of rockets and mortars at southern Israel and at Jewish settlements in the lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War and southern Israel, damaging a home but causing no casualties.

Violence has blighted new hopes of peace following Yasser Arafat's death on November 11. Israel killed eight Palestinians in separate raids in Gaza on Saturday, after militants killed six Israelis at a border crossing on Thursday.

The top policymaking committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation made its strongest appeal for a halt "to all military acts that harm our national interests and provide excuses to Israel".

Militants from Abbas' own Fatah movement objected, saying their attacks were a response to Israeli raids.

"We will not abide by any decision as long as the enemy continues its crimes and aggression against our people," said Abu Qusai, a Gaza spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Abbas would try again this week to win over fighters to a truce in the 4-year-old uprising that Israel would have to reciprocate.

"We have to try. If we are willing to talk with our occupiers, shouldn't we talk to our brothers? We have to continue. This is not an easy task," Shaath said.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak criticised Sharon for suspending contacts with Abbas after the Gaza border attack.

"Experience says that it will never be possible that we can go on with negotiations if we say that all violence must stop," Mubarak told reporters in Cairo.

"Thank God, so far, Sharon and Abu Mazen (Abbas) don't hate each other, so there's no justification for them to delay negotiations," he said.

- REUTERS