"We will move against those who are involved in the firing of rockets, starting from their leaders and down to the last of their terrorists," he said.

Israeli warplanes carried out five raids on the Gaza Strip late Wednesday and early Thursday, Palestinian security officials said, adding that two Palestinians were wounded when the Israelis targeted a house in Shatti refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip where an official of the Palestinian militant umbrella group the Popular Resistance Committees lived.

A second Israeli air raid took place on the Jabaliya refugee camp, also in the north of the Gaza Strip.

That attack targeted the home of a leader of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas which heads the current Palestinian government, the sources said. They gave no further details.

An army spokesman confirmed that aircraft had carried out two attacks "aimed at buildings used to store weapons."

Three later raids were aimed at houses belonging to Hamas militants at Rafah in the south of the Strip and in Jabaliya, the officials said. They could not say whether there had been victims.

A 24-year-old man was seriously wounded in the rocket strike, which occurred not far from the house of the Israeli defense minister, who lives in the town.

The man was a member of a private security firm that guards Peretz's home, police said.

Later in the day, a 17-year-old boy was seriously wounded when a rocket exploded near a Sderot police station, injuring three others, medics and the army said.

Wednesday's death marked the first time since July 2005 that Palestinian rocket fire has killed someone inside the Jewish state, according to the army, and came a week after an Israeli artillery strike killed 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun.

In Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to send an urgent fact-finding mission to Beit Hanun to examine the impact of the Israeli offensive.

The mission will "assess the situation of victims ... address the needs of survivors ... and make recommendations on ways and means to protect Palestinian civilians against any further Israeli assaults".

The resolution was rejected by the Israeli ambassador in Geneva, Itzhak Levanon, who said chief responsibility for the situation in Gaza lay with the Palestinian failure to stop rockets being fired.

In Gaza City, the armed wings of Hamas and the ultra-radical Islamic Jihad group competed with each other to claim responsibility for the strike.

"This holy warrior operation comes... in response to the massacre of Beit Hanun and the continuing Zionist crimes against our Palestinian people," said a statement from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

At a press conference, masked members of the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said their gunmen were responsible.

In all, 13 rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel Wednesday, the army said, prompting calls for an expansion of the Israeli offensive.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive in late June after militants captured a soldier in a deadly cross-border raid. More than 300 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers have since died in the territory.

Militants have frequently fired makeshift rockets into Israel since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Nine people have been killed, six of them in Sderot, according to army figures.

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