AN Israeli missile hit the Gaza Strip home of a well known lawmaker from the governing Islamist group Hamas today in what the army said was an attack on a weapons factory.There were no reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza on the building of Mariam Farhat, better known as Umm Nidal, who has often voiced pride at the death of three of her six sons during a Palestinian uprising. Residents were warned in advance of the attack. Israel has frequently carried out such strikes on buildings it says are used by militants during a three-month-old Gaza offensive to try to recover a captured soldier and stop cross-border rocket fire.
"There was an air strike on a weapons storage and manufacturing facility," an army spokeswoman said. The building was badly damaged.
Mr Farhat was one of the best known of the Hamas parliamentarians elected in January when the Islamist group dedicated to destroying Israel defeated moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah. Mr Farhat first won attention for appearing with her 17-year-old son Mohammed in a video recorded before he carried out a shooting attack on a Jewish settlement in 2000 in which he killed five people before being shot dead.
Israel abandoned its Gaza Strip settlements in September 2005, but launched an offensive in the territory in June after the abduction of the soldier in a raid over the border by Palestinian militants, including Hamas's armed wing. Since then, Israel has also detained dozens of Hamas officials, including ministers and lawmakers, in the West Bank.