Palestinian girl, militant killed as Israel mulls next move

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli tank fire killed a Palestinian girl and a Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday as Israel's security cabinet met to discuss its next move nearly a year after the Islamist takeover. Palestinian medics and witnesses said 10-year-old Hadeel al-Smeiri died and two members of her family were wounded when a tank shell hit a house east of the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis. A member of the armed wing of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement was killed a short time later in the same area, again by tank fire. His identity was not immediately known. A military spokesman in Tel Aviv told AFP "Israeli ground forces opened fire Wednesday morning on terrorists operating near Khan Yunis, around the security barrier" separating the strip from Israel. The deaths came a day after troops killed three Hamas fighters in Gaza City and four days before the first anniversary of the Islamists' bloody seizure of the territory from forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas. In Jerusalem Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presided over a meeting of the security cabinet to decide what to do next in the crowded and impoverished coastal territory where Palestinian militants launch near-daily rocket attacks. "The security cabinet convened at around 8:30 (0530 GMT) to consider an eventual truce in the violence in the Gaza Strip," Mark Regev told AFP. "The meeting should last two or three hours." Israel's political and military leaders have for months been warning of a wider military blitz in Gaza aimed at ousting the Hamas-run government and halting rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli communities near the border. The security cabinet meeting comes after Olmert held more than two hours of talks on Tuesday with Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi and intelligence chiefs to discuss Gaza. Israeli forces launch regular air and ground strikes into the territory but have held back from a full-scale invasion of the territory. Egyptian-mediated talks on a proposed truce have dragged on for months with Israel demanding assurances that militants will not use any period of calm to rearm by smuggling in weapons from Egypt. Hamas demands that Israel ease the blockade it imposed after the Islamists seized control of Gaza last June 15 and allow the opening of border posts, in particular the Rafah crossing with Egypt, Gaza's only one bypassing Israel. Israeli concern over the fate of Gilad Shalit -- a 21-year-old soldier seized by Palestinian militants in a deadly cross-border raid two years ago, will also affect any decision on launching a full-scale incursion. At least 497 people, nearly all Palestinians and the majority of them Gaza militants, have been killed since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed in November, according to an AFP count.