Gaza City - Israeli F16 warplanes rocketed three smuggling tunnels Wednesday afternoon in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, dug under the border with Egypt, Palestinian security officials and an Israeli military spokesman said.

The Hamas security sources said Israeli warplanes hovered over the area and carried out three separate airstrikes.

Gaza emergency services chief Mo'aweya Hassanein told reporters four Palestinians were moderately wounded in the strikes.

The strikes came shortly after Hamas militants fired five mortar shells into Israel from the eastern Gaza Strip, at what it said was an Israeli army force.

The mutual attacks between Israel and Gaza militants came hours after a senior Hamas official had said that the radical Islamist movement ruling Gaza and other militant groups had secretly agreed to halt rockets attacks on Israel, to avoid a possible second Israeli offensive by the new Israeli government of hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The previous Israeli government had launched massive offensive in Gaza against the rocket attacks on December 27, killing 1,417 Gazans, most of them civilians, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).

A military spokesman in Tel Aviv said that since Israel unilaterally ended the offensive on January 18, Palestinian militants have fired more than 200 rockets and mortar shells into Israel from the coastal salient.(dpa)