Source: Al-Jazeera English, 05-06-2008

‘Israel's' prime minister has said that fresh military operations in the Gaza Strip are more likely than a ceasefire agreement.

"As it seems now, we are closer to a military operation than to another arrangement," Ehud Olmert told reporters in the US on Thursday.

He said Egyptian peace efforts on the Gaza strip were "not ripening in a way that can bring a ceasefire".

Olmert spoke after an ‘Israeli' man was killed in a mortar attack by Gaza fighters, triggering an air raid on the territory that left a four-year-old Palestinian girl dead.

The girl's mother and another woman were wounded in the air strike by an ‘Israeli' drone which the ‘Israelis' said had targeted Palestinian armed groups.

The girl and her mother were outside their house near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza when a drone fired a missile, witnesses said.

The Khan Yunis hospital identified the girl as Aya al-Manjar and said her mother was critically wounded.

An 'Israeli' military spokeswoman confirmed the attack, saying: "The air force conducted a raid and fired at Palestinian gunmen."

She said the attack targeted the area from which Palestinian fighters had earlier fired rockets that hit a kibbutz, or commune, in southern ‘Israel', killing the ‘Israeli' man and wounding several.

The violence followed a warning from Olmert earlier this week that the army would launch a large-scale operation in Gaza if fighters did not stop their attacks

Clashes between ‘Israeli' forces and armed Palestinian groups have continued in and around the tiny Palestinian territory despite efforts by Egypt to mediate a truce.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, issued a new internet message on Wednesday urging fighters to escalate attacks on ‘Israel' over the crippling siege of the territory it imposed after Hamas seized control almost a year ago.