Gaza City - Hamas threatened Tuesday to call off a five-month-old Gaza truce, after Israel kept up its near-total closure of the strip for the 14th consecutive day in response to ongoing rocket attacks.

A spokesman for the radical Islamist movement that rules Gaza called on all Palestinian militant factions active in Gaza to meet and reach a joint decision on whether to continue with the truce or break it off.

Gaza City - Hamas threatened Tuesday to call off a five-month-old Gaza truce, after Israel kept up its near-total closure of the strip for the 14th consecutive day in response to ongoing rocket attacks.

A spokesman for the radical Islamist movement that rules Gaza called on all Palestinian militant factions active in Gaza to meet and reach a joint decision on whether to continue with the truce or break it off.

Gaza City - Several Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed into the south-east Gaza Strip Tuesday morning, sparking clashes with Palestinian gunmen, witnesses and the Israeli military said.

The witnesses said that three tanks and two bulldozers rolled some 100 metres across the border east of the town of Rafah. They said the bulldozers were clearing cultivated land.

Gaza/Tel Aviv - Israel was keeping its border crossings with the Gaza Strip shut for a fifth day running Monday, as rocket fire against its southern towns and villages continued.

Militants fired at least seven Gaza-made rockets into Israel in the morning, bringing to at least 134 the number of projectiles launched from Gaza since a fragile truce that had largely held for five months began disintegrating two weeks ago.

Israel said it would allow the entry of some 30 trucks with medical supplies and humanitarian aid into Gaza Monday. But a military spokesman in Tel Aviv said final authorization "depends on what happens during the day."

Tel Aviv/Gaza City - Israel killed four Palestinian militants in an airstrike near Gaza City Sunday morning, hours after Palestinians launched rockets at Israeli border towns.

In a further indication that a five-month-old truce between Israel and the Gaza militias is fast collapsing, Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert said he has ordered the military to submit a plan to "restore full quiet to the south", and the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, said it would "respond heavily to any Zionist offensive or attacks against our people."

Tel Aviv - In response to a resumption of Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel, Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Saturday threatened a military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

"It is possible that the time will come in which a large calculated military operation will be necessary," he said in a speech in the coastal city of Netanya.

He called the firing of rockets into Israeli border cities untolerable and said the Israeli Army is prepared for a large offensive that could be painful for the Palestinian side.