Palestinian militants launched at least eight rockets from the Gaza Strip following Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcement of a unilateral ceasefire, according to the military. The attack around 2 A.M. when the Israeli truce was to take effect, Olmert's claim that Hamas was crippled by the Israeli offensive that has killed about 1,200 people, nearly half of them women and children, turned the streets and neighborhoods of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into battlegrounds and drew international condemnation including an Arab move to try the Jewish state for war crimes. Olmert announced the unilater truce late Saturday in a televised address after his 12-member security cabinet met. “At 2:00 in the morning we will stop fire but we will continue to be deployed in Gaza and its surroundings,” he said. “If our enemies decide to strike back and want to carry on then the Israeli army will consider itself free to respond with force.” He then audaciously apologized for the civilian casualties and the suffering the war has caused in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people, which is facing a humanitarian crisis. Addressing Gaza residents, he said: “We wanted to defend our children, we are saddened for your every child that has been killed, your suffering is terrible and I offer you my deep regret. He accused the Hamas rulers of Gaza to have taken the Strip's civilian population hostage “by its terrorist actions, without taking into account its suffering.” “I regret very much that there were so many... who suffered from this confrontation. I want to apologise to anyone who was unjustly affected by the operation.” officials demanded an investigation into the new strike, the fourth such Israeli attack during its war on Hamas. The army said that it had carried out 70 aerial attacks against weapons smuggling tunnels along Gaza's border with Egypt. Gaza militants fired some seven rockets into Israel on Saturday, without causing any casualties. Israel's unilateral truce came after it won pledges from Washington and Cairo to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza from Egypt, a key demand for ending the war. The “memorandum of understanding” was signed in Washington between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on the final working day of the Bush administration. But Egyptian Foreign Minister Abul Gheit also fired a warning shot across Israel's bows by saying that Cairo is “absolutely not bound” by the US-Israeli agreement on arms smuggling. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had been trying to broker a bilateral truce between Hamas and Israel, reiterated the stand in a televised address earlier in the day in whch he said Israeli troops must leave Gaza immediately. “Egypt, in its efforts to stop the aggression, is working on securing its borders with Israel and the Gaza Strip and it will never accept the presence of foreign observers on its territory,” Mubarak said. Israel's unilateral truce followed an overwhelming UN General Assembly vote late Friday for an immediate and durable ceasefire in Gaza leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces. Since Israel unleashed Operation Cast Lead on Dec. 27, at least 1,203 Palestinians, including 410 children, have been killed and 5,300 wounded. On the Israeli side, 10 soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or in rocket strikes. The army says militants in Gaza have fired more than 700 rockets and mortar rounds into Israel since the start of the war. – Agencies He also said that he hoped the war would not bring the sputtering Middle East peace process to a complete halt. “We hope that we will continue to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority in order to bring peace to this area based on the vision of (US) President Bush.” Hamas said Olmert's declaration was not enough. “A unilateral declaration of ceasefire does not mean the halt of aggression on the Palestinian people of Gaza,” Ali Barakeh, deputy head of Hamas, said in the Syrian capital. “The ceasefire declaration is not enough if the occupation forces do not withdraw, the blockade is not lifted and the border crossings are not opened, giving the Palestinian people the right to continue all means of resistance.” In Ramallah on the West Bank, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said the unilateral ceasefire should be followed by a truce agreement and troop withdrawal. Olmert had earlier said that Israel had achieved all its goals in the massive three-week-long offensive – the largest Israeli assault ever launched on the impoverished territory of 1.5 million Palestinians. He said the war boosted Israel's deterrence and “If Hamas completely stops its attacks, we will judge at what moment we will leave the Gaza Strip.” “Hamas received a hard blow. Its leaders are hiding. Many of its men have been killed. Dozens of tunnels have been bombarded. The ability to launch rockets into Israel has been reduced, the places from where most of the rockets are launched are under control of Israeli forces. In the hours before the meeting, the Israeli army kept up its attacks, killing more than a dozen people, including a woman and a child who had taken refuge with hundreds of others at a UN
