The Israeli military has carried out several overnight attacks on Gaza, leaving one Palestinian resistance fighter dead.

A medical source said the man from Islamic Jihad died on Friday morning from injuries sustained in an overnight Israeli air raid over the southern Gaza Strip.

Muhammad Abd al-Al was the first Palestinian to be killed during a massive Israeli offensive against Gaza which started before dawn on Wednesday in an attempt to secure the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

Abd al-Al had been with a group of other Islamic Jihad activists not far from Gaza's disbanded international airport when an Israeli helicopter gunship opened fire in their direction, Palestinian sources said.

An Israeli army spokesman said an air strike was fired at a cell of fighters. He said the cell had tried to fire an anti-tank missile at troops based around the airport in Dahaniya.

Interior ministry attack

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with a series of 30 overnight air raids, setting the Hamas-controlled interior ministry ablaze. The ministry has nominal responsibility for the Palestinian security forces.

The military claimed the targets were "used by terror organizations to attack Israel" and were known to be empty at the time of attack.

The office of Siad Siam, the interior minister and a senior Hamas leader, was specifically attacked, the army said. 

Two Hamas training camps were struck, as was another used by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an armed faction connected to the Fatah movement of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

An al-Aqsa weapons storage site was hit in Gaza City, along with a Hamas office in the Jabaliya refugee camp while the air force bombarded 22 access routes and open areas used by resistance fighters to fire rockets towards Israel, a spokesman said.

Deals

Taher al-Nunu, a Palestinian foreign ministry spokesman, said the Palestinian government was still seeking a diplomatic solution to end the crisis.

There has been no sign of life from Shalit since his abduction on Sunday. The Popular Resistance Committees - one of the groups holding him - did not confirm his condition in a statement released on Thursday, but insisted on swapping him for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Israel has rejected that deal.

Photo Caption

A wounded Palestinian in hospital n southern Gaza