Israel kills four in Gaza after warning to Hamas

9.00am

GAZA - An Israeli helicopter gunship on Sunday killed four people, including a senior Hamas militant, hours after Israeli's army chief warned Hamas leaders would be hunted down.

Relatives said Ahmed Shtewe, 24, a senior militant from the armed Izz-el-Deen al-Qassam wing of Hamas, was killed in the Israeli missile strike along with three other Palestinians.

A Hamas official said at least two of the men killed in the strike were Hamas members.

A witness to the attack told Reuters the men were walking near a beach in the heart of Gaza City when they were hit.

The strike followed a warning to the Palestinian Authority by Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon in which he said Israel would hunt down Hamas leaders if Palestinian security forces did not.

"All Hamas militants are potential targets, and from our perspective all members of the organisation are part of the radical core," Yaalon said.

"If we see that the Palestinian Authority does not deal with this core, we will be forced to do so," he said.

Hamas and other militants organisations have vowed to carry out revenge strikes after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader in a missile strike on his car in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

The assassination -- in revenge for the killing of 21 people in a suicide bomb attack on a bus in Jerusalem on Tuesday -- prompted Hamas and other militants to declare the end to a seven-week-old ceasefire which underpinned a US-brokered "road map" to peace.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Sunday had issued new orders to rein in militants responsible for rocket and mortar attacks on Israelis.

Arafat's security chief in Gaza made the announcement before the latest Israeli strike, which may worsen a new spiral of violence.

The measures followed Hamas' deepest rocket hit ever into Israel -- onto a beach just outside the Israeli coastal city of Ashqelon some eight km north of Gaza's border.

Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr condemned the latest Israel missile attack.

"This shows that Israel is pursuing war against the Palestinian people. This operation coincides with the measures that the Palestinian Authority is undertaking to restore calm," Amr told Reuters in the West Bank.

"We urge the United States and the quartet to immediately intervene to stop this war."

Arafat ordered security measures in Gaza under intense US pressure after an apparent attempt to obstruct a bid by his reformist prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, to obtain more authority to restore "law and order".

Major-General Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh, the top security chief in Gaza who reports to Arafat rather than Abbas, said he had ordered his forces to prevent attacks on Israel by maintaining "security and stability in all border areas".

- REUTERS