Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian gunmen and a police officer and kept up missile strikes against militant targets in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, residents and medical officials said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel's assault on rocket-launching squads and gunmen would not be open-ended but declined to say when it would finish. He appeared to acknowledge the rocket threat could not be wiped out by the operation.
Several home-made missiles hit the Israeli border town of Sderot, the Zaka rescue service said. No one was hurt. Israeli forces have killed at least 48 people, more than half of them gunmen, in the five-day operation in northern Gaza, Palestinian medical officials have said.
"We have no intention of conquering Gaza," Olmert said at the start of a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
"We have declared that we will never accept the ongoing (rocket) fire and that we would take any steps needed to considerably reduce the fire and prevent terror activity."
The operation, mainly focused on the town of Beit Hanoun, is one of the biggest since Israel's army and Jewish settlers were pulled out of Gaza last year after 38 years of occupation.
It is part of a wider offensive launched in late June after militants, including members of the governing Hamas movement, abducted Israeli military corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid from Gaza.
"It is obvious that the Israeli escalation aims to make the Palestinians pay a high price regarding the Israeli soldier issue and tighten the siege of the Palestinian nation," Izzat al-Risq, a senior Hamas official, told Reuters in Damascus.
Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of "war crimes". "These attacks represent a massive escalation that is likely to lead us to more violence and more suffering," he said.
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Doctors and police said Israeli troops shot dead the policeman near his post in northern Gaza. Israel's army said it was checking the report. Two gunmen from Hamas's armed wing were shot in separate clashes with soldiers.
Israeli analysts expect Olmert will end the Beit Hanoun operation before he heads to Washington for talks with President George W. Bush, scheduled for November 13, although a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said the two issues weren't linked.
The United States has said Israel has the right to defend itself against rocket attacks.