GAZA, Sept. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Israel continued on Sunday to strikethe Gaza Strip and mass troops and artillery cannons along its border after it killed two Hamas militants and injured more than 20 civilians in its first major strikes on Gaza since its pullout earlier this month.

    Israeli helicopters fired three missiles in the northern Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the army said.

    Israel attacked a weapons-storage facility in the Jebaliya refugee camp used by the Popular Resistance Committees and struck a building in Beit Hanoun housing the offices of the Popular Frontfor the Liberation of Palestine, it said.

    In a deadly attack on Saturday, the Israeli army targeted two vehicles in Gaza City carrying munitions and Hamas militants, killing two Hamas members.

    Israeli warplanes also raided military targets in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis and around Gaza City, leaving at least 20 Palestinians injured.

    An Israeli Apache attack helicopter fired three missiles at militant targets in Khan Younis around midnight Saturday, hitting the house of Zeyad Abu Hayya, a leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,the armed wing of the dominant Fatah movement.

    The missiles also damaged a workshop used by the militant groupto make rockets. Two militants of the group Hassan al-Qassas and Maher el-Farra survived the second missile attack on the house of al-Qassas.

    The series of Israeli attacks came after militants fired 36 rockets at Israeli towns. Gaza militants said the rocket strikes were in retaliation for a blast that killed 15 people at a Hamas rally.

    The Israeli security cabinet later held an emergency meeting Saturday evening and formally decided to resume targeted assassination of Palestinian militants to avoid the repeat of rocket attacks by militants.

    Officials who took part in the meeting said operations that will be undertaken in the coming hours and days are designed to ensure that rocket firing will not be repeated, local newspaper Haaretz reported in its on-line edition.

    In the initial stage, the Israeli army will resume targeted killings and indefinitely seal off the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

    A cabinet statement said, "The response will make it clear thatHamas, as well as other terror groups and the Palestinian Authority, will pay a very heavy price."

    Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demanded the use of artillery fire against armed groups in Gaza, something Israel has avoided in the past. But he opposed an Israel Defense Forces ground incursion into Gaza, arguing that Israel did not disengage from Gaza in order to reenter it.

    The escalation threatened to derail a shaky seven-month-old truce and dealt a heavy blow to hopes that Israel's withdrawal twoweeks ago would invigorate peacemaking.

    Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), declared a state of emergency on Saturday and called upon its militants to be ready to carry out strikes in retaliation for Israeli army attacks.

    The brigades said in a leaflet sent to reporters that it had called on all its militants to respond to the "Zionist" enemy's crimes and strike it everywhere "in our occupied homeland withoutmercy to revenge for the blood of the martyrs and teach this enemya lesson."

    The group also called on other militant groups to be careful, to be on alert and declare a state of emergency by reconsidering all the previous security measures were valid before.

    Meanwhile, the group slammed the Palestinian National Authority(PNA) and called some of PNA officials "those aides of the occupation," who gave Israel the excuses to exaggerate in committing more crimes against the Palestinian people. Enditem