The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Jerusalem

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel will go back to carrying out military strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip despite a month-old truce, army radio reported on Tuesday.

"Those who miss the operations in the Gaza Strip, don't worry, they will come," Barak told a Labour party event in Jerusalem, without elaborating.

In June, Israel agreed to an Egyptian-brokered truce with Palestinian militants in Gaza that has mostly halted the near daily rocket and mortar attacks launched from the impoverished territory on southern Israel. But Israeli officials remain wary of the deal and suspect Gaza's Hamas rulers and other armed groups are using the calm to train and rearm with weapons smuggled through a vast network of tunnels under the border with Egypt.

Israel had also said the truce depended on progress in releasing Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid on June 25, 2006.