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.

Tel Aviv  - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has approved dozens of construction projects in the occupied West Bank over the past months, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

The vast majority of the projects listed by Ha'aretz are in Jewish settlement blocks which Israel has vowed to keep as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians.

But some are in isolated settlements located to the east of Israel's West Bank security barrier.

Baghdad - The Iraqi soldier who killed 4 US soldiers on Wednesday was acting in anger after the Americans mocked him while he was praying, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa Thursday.

Earlier reports about the incident in the northern city of Mosul had said that the Iraqi soldier opened fire on a group of US soldiers after a verbal dispute.

Praying five times a day is a religious obligation for Muslims. Men usually go to mosques to pray.

New York - Israeli President Shimon Peres said Wednesday his government agrees with a Saudi peace proposal to settle the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

Peres told the UN General Assembly that Israel agrees with the Arab call that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be solved through military means and that a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East is "the strategic option of the Arab countries."

"This is Israel's strategy as well," Peres said in a UN debate on religion and peace.

"These expression in the Arab peace initiative are inspirational and promising - a serious opening for real progress," he said.