Gaza City/Cairo  - The first round of intensive reconciliation talks between the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah factions ended in Cairo on Tuesday, as negotiators agreed to refer outstanding issues to a higher committee, participants said.

Yasser al-Wadia, an independent academic taking part in the talks, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that "a number of outstanding cases had been settled," and that the independent participants had returned to Gaza from Cairo.

Gaza  - Egypt has invited the Damascus-based leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Cairo to join talks aimed at reconciling Palestinian factions and forming a "national unity" government, a Palestinian news agency reported Saturday.

Gaza's Sama news agency quoted "high-ranking Palestinian sources" as saying that Egypt sent official invitations to exiled top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and Ramadan Shallah, chief of Islamic Jihad in Syria, to join the Cairo talks. The two leaders will arrive later this week in Cairo, Sama reported.

Gaza City  - Israel's recent, 22-day offensive in the Gaza Strip aimed at curbing rocket attacks from the salient killed 1,434 Palestinians, two-third of them civilians, a Palestinian rights group announced overnight, publishing the results of an investigation.

Thirteen Israelis were killed and several dozen wounded during the offensive, the victims of either ground fighting or Palestinian rockets.

Gaza - Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip on Thursday slammed the ongoing rocket attacks against Israel and pledged to stop them.

Hamas has "no relations with the rockets that are being fired from Gaza. They are being fired in the wrong time and we confirm the security services are following up those who stand behind these rockets," the Hamas Interior Ministry said.

The statement came after a new group calling itself Hezbollah of Palestine had begun firing rockets against Israel every few days and claiming responsibility for these attacks.

Gaza/Tel Aviv  - Israel attacked smuggling tunnels along the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt early Thursday, responding to ongoing rocket and mortar fire from the coastal salient, the Israeli military said.

Two tunnels were destroyed in the overnight airstrike near Rafah, a military spokeswoman said.

She said the strike was a response to the firing of four rockets and one mortar shell by Palestinian militants into southern Israel the previous day.

Gaza militants have fired almost 170 rockets and mortar shells at southern Israeli towns and villages since January 18 when Israel ended a ferocious, 22-day offensive that aimed but has thus far failed to curb such attacks.

Gaza - British Member of Parliament George Galloway on Tuesday delivered thousands of pounds and a convoy of vehicles to the Hamas government in Gaza a day after his caravan arrived in Gaza City.

"We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine," Galloway said during a welcoming celebration organized by Hamas in Gaza City.