Hamas arrested three Palestinians who fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a militant faction said, in the first such detentions since the Islamist group and Israel agreed on a cease-fire last month. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, said Hamas men pursued its members after the attack and "abducted them" in Jabalya refugee camp. "We demand their immediate release," said Abu Qusai, a brigades spokesman.
The cease-fire deal calls on Hamas to prevent cross-border rocket fire and attacks from the Gaza Strip and for Israel to halt its raids and ease an economic blockade of the impoverished territory. Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said "we stress that all parties should maintain the national agreement that was reached with a consensus."
Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip a year ago after routing forces loyal to the secular Fatah group, had previously said it would not use force against other militants who violate the truce.
Al Aqsa said it launched two Qassam rockets at the western Negev in retaliation for the Israel Defense Force's killing of an unarmed member of the group as he tried to cross a border fence into Israel earlier in the day. His death marked the first fatality along the Israel-Gaza border since the beginning of the Egypt-brokered truce on June 19. An IDF spokesman said soldiers shot the man after he ignored their calls to stop and only saw later that he had been unarmed. The family of the victim, an 18-year-old youth, said he was probably looking for scrap metal along the border when he was killed.
The rockets struck open areas in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, causing no damage or injuries. "If a total cessation of fire from Gaza, as committed in the calm, is not implemented, the calm has no possibility to succeed," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said.