Tel Aviv  - Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to transfer the Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem to Palestinian sovereignty and evacuate some 60,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.

Yediot Ahronot said Olmert detailed the concessions he offered to Abbas to US President Barack Obama's newly appointed envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell.

Gaza City  - Israeli aircraft bombed two targets in southern Gaza, shortly after Palestinian militants fired rockets toward Israel for the first time since the start of a ceasefire on January 18, witnesses said early Thursday.

Israeli F-16s struck around midnight Wednesday near Gaza's Rafah border with Egypt. No injuries were reported.

One bomb struck the border area, where hundreds of tunnels are used for smuggling supplies and arms into Gaza, with a second airstrike against a Palestinian metal workshop.

Tel Aviv  - Palestinian militants fired a rocket at southern Israel Wednesday night, the first since Israeli troops withdrew from the strip last week, the military said.

A military spokesman in Tel Aviv said the rocket was launched from the central Gaza Strip, near the refugee camp of el-Bureij, and landed at the kibbutz (agricultural commune) of Re'im, in the southern Israeli Eshkol region.

Jerusalem  - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Wednesday Europe is ready to send back its team of observers to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt "at any moment."

He said however that an agreement was first needed between warring Palestinian factions, Egypt and Israel that would allow their return and the reopening of the crossing.

The EU Border Assistance Mission in Rafah (EUBAM) was established shortly after Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. It suspended its operations in June
2007 due to Hamas' Gaza take-over.

Tel Aviv - Israeli aircraft bombed tunnels under the Gaza-Egyptian border early Wednesday morning, in response to an attack against an Israeli army border patrol Tuesday which killed one soldier, the Israeli military said in a statement.

The statement gave no further details, and there was no word of casualties.

Tel Aviv  - A bomb planted by Palestinian militants killed an Israeli soldier Tuesday morning along the Gaza Strip border, sparking Israeli retaliation that killed two Palestinians in the most serious violence since the start of a Gaza ceasefire on January 18.

Israel closed the crossing points into the Gaza Strip "until further notice," an Israeli official said.

Early Wednesday, Israeli forces struck an alleged tunnel complex in southern Gaza near the Rafah crossing into Egypt, Arab media reported citing witnesses.