Gaza City, July 03: Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas today condemned a rocket attack on a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip and the killing of a foreign worker in the West Bank as "acts of sabotage." "These are acts of sabotage which we reject," Abbas told journalists accompanying him on a visit to Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip. Israel had earlier lodged its first formal protest over a violation of a truce recently announced by Palestinian militant groups following rocket fire against a Jewish settlement in Gaza, a military spokesman said. Palestinian militants fired three rockets on the Kfar Darom settlement in southern Gaza overnight slightly injuring three Israelis, the spokesman said.


"We have handed the Palestinians an official protest via the joint coordination and liaison commission," he said, adding that there had been further firing on Israeli positions near the Egyptian border, causing no casualties.


A Palestinian official said that the Israeli Army had re-blocked the main north-south road in the Gaza Strip Thursday morning after the incident.


A Bulgarian construction worker was shot dead on Monday near the West Bank town of Jenin in an attack claimed by the al-Aqsa martyrs brigades, a faction linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah Movement.

The brigades later issued a statement signing on to a ceasefire declared by Palestinian militant groups and Fatah. Bureau Report