Violence rocks Gaza for seventh straight day
Palestinians, Israel hold informal meeting
 |  Israeli soldiers gather Tuesday in a staging area near the Jabalya Palestinian refugee camp in northern Gaza. |
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 Israeli operations continue in Gaza.
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GAZA CITY (CNN) -- For the seventh day Tuesday, explosions rocked Gaza as Israel kept up its attacks aimed at ending Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
Officials from the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military held informal meetings in the midst of the violence, and Palestinian sources said they were aimed at halting the Israeli offensive that began last Wednesday after two children were killed in the southern Israeli city of Sderot.
Israeli officials say Palestinian militants fired at least 30 Qassam rockets into Israel during September.
The Israeli military said that officially no negotiations were under way, and the Palestinian sources described the meetings as preliminary.
A U.N. Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel for the Gaza attacks failed Tuesday, after the United States vetoed it. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, said the resolution was one-sided in that it condemned Israel but made no mention of the Palestinian rocket attacks.
The Israeli military aims to create a 5.5-mile buffer zone outside northern Gaza to put Israeli cities outside the range of homemade Qassam rockets.
In violence Tuesday:
A Palestinian man died after an Israeli air strike on a house in northern Gaza, according to Palestinian medical sources.Two Palestinian men died in a tank attack on a house in northern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said.An Israeli drone fired a rocket that landed near the Jabalya Palestinian refugee camp in northern Gaza, killing two suspected Palestinian militants, the Israeli military said. Abu Mosar, a Palestinian field commander in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, told CNN the men were brothers. The Israelis said they saw a group of Palestinian militants setting explosives outside the camp.An Israeli aircraft fired a missile that hit a car in Gaza City, killing Bashir Dabash, a commander in the military wing of the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad and his assistant, the Israeli military said.A member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- a military offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement -- was killed in northern Gaza, Palestinian security sources said.In Rafah in southern Gaza, away from the area of the incursion, a teenage Palestinian girl was killed near an Israeli checkpoint. Palestinians contend the girl was on her way to school when Israeli troops opened fire. Israeli officials said she left a suspicious package at the checkpoint and ran when confronted by Israeli troops. The Israeli military said troops fired at the girl but that Palestinians were also firing in her direction.The Palestinian death toll from the latest fighting is near 80, according to statements from Palestinian officials.
A Hamas leader told CNN last Thursday, as Israeli troops were moving into northern Gaza, that his group would end the rocket attacks if the Israelis left.
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist organization. The group's military wing, Izzedine al Qassam, has admitted responsibility for attacks against Israeli civilians as well as attacks against the Israeli military. The United States labels Hamas a terrorist organization.
In a radio address Monday night, Arafat appeared to call for a stop to the rocket attacks, saying Palestinian militants in Gaza should not give Israel any reason to stage incursions into Palestinian territory.
