Four Palestinians die in new Israeli assault

GAZA: An Israeli airstrike killed three militants in the Gaza Strip, Hamas said, hours after a separate clash killed a fourth Palestinian gunman.
The Israeli military alleged that its aircraft targeted a tunnel inside the southern Gaza Strip used by militants.
A Hamas source said three of its men were in the tunnel at the time of the attack and were killed in the blast.
Hours earlier, one Palestinian was killed and five Israeli soldiers wounded when Israeli forces started destroying part of a separate tunnel they had uncovered last month stretching from Gaza into Israel.
At a sermon before Friday prayers, senior Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya said the clash showed Hamas fighters were “alert and ready with their fingers on the trigger.”
“We are not interested in an unjustified escalation but we have the right to defend our people,” he later told reporters.
“We urge Arab nations to support us so that we can get rid of the occupation and regain our land,” Al-Hayya said.
The Israel-Gaza frontier had been mostly peaceful for the past year following the Egyptian-brokered cease-fire.
However on Monday, Gaza militants fired two rockets at a southern Israeli coastal city and Israel bombed what it said were two concealed rocket launchers in northern Gaza. There were no casualties reported in those incidents.
The Palestinian Authority resumed peace talks with Israel in July.
But tension has also mounted in the West Bank, where eight Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli soldiers and three Israelis have been killed since the negotiations began.