IsraelÂ’s air force killed two Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, one of them a rocket squad member who had launched a salvo across the border, militant and medical sources said. The air strikes followed a five-day Israeli assault on the ruling Hamas Islamists in the northern Gaza Strip which killed more than 100 Palestinians, many of them civilians, as well as two soldiers. The offensive prompted Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend peace talks with Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due to visit later on Tuesday to try to reconcile Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Hamas, which has largely held its fire since the Israeli pullback on Monday, said one of its gunmen died in a missile strike in Gaza City, near the border with the Jewish state. An earlier air force attack killed a member of an Islamic Jihad rocket squad in the northern Gaza Strip, and wounded one of his comrades, the Palestinian militant group said. Islamic Jihad said its men launched seven rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot.