The were no injuries or damage, the Israeli military says. But there is worry that militants are maneuvering to open a new front in the fighting.

Rockets streaming into Israel. As Israel continues with airstrikes in Gaza, rockets from the Lebanese border sailed into Israel, threatening a potential second front for conflict in the region. (Photo: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

    Tel Aviv and Jerusalem - Rockets from Lebanon smashed into northern Israel today, provoking a counterattack by Israeli artillery units and sending civilians running for bomb shelters.

    It was the second such attack in less than a week. Although the Israeli military said the rockets injured no one and damaged nothing, they revived concerns that militants might try to open a new front to distract Israel from its war on Gaza.

    There was no claim of responsibility for the rockets, which landed near the town of Kiryat Shemona. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed guerrilla group that fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006, had denied involvement in the earlier attack.

    In Gaza, the Israeli military said its warplanes and helicopter gunships hit at least 60 targets early today, including more than 30 weapons-smuggling tunnels from Egypt.

    A broad coalition of Israeli human-rights groups today decried the toll the fighting has taken on Gaza's civilians and suggested war crimes could be involved.

    The fighting has weakened the military power of Hamas, and its political leadership is divided over plans for a possible cease-fire. But an Israeli intelligence official said Tuesday that the radical group remained dangerous, with 15,000 fighters, tunnels and a sophisticated arsenal of rockets and antitank weapons.

    The senior official's assessment was delivered in a news briefing on a day when Israeli ground forces and Hamas militants battled in a neighborhood of high-rise apartments in southeastern Gaza City. Civilians fled as Israeli units, backed by shelling from warships near the seaside enclave, edged deeper into the city but appeared to stop short of Hamas strongholds.

    Israel's push into the Tal al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City, about a mile from the city center, increased pressure on Hamas fighters and on humanitarian groups and hospitals trying to cope with rising numbers of homeless and wounded Palestinians. More than 971 Gazans, including 311 children and 76 women, had been killed and 4,418 wounded in 18 days of fighting, according to the United Nations.

    Israeli forces invaded Tal al Hawa "and started to shell from the sky and from the ground," said Khader Dahdouh, whose home was badly damaged in fighting that began after midnight and lasted until dawn. "The resistance fighters were firing rocket-propelled grenades, and the soldiers took cover in nearby villas."

    The Israeli intelligence official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity because of security concerns, did not underestimate Hamas but indicated that the group had been overwhelmed by 18 days of bombardment. The official said Hamas was not significantly tapping its caches of antitank and antiaircraft missiles but was occasionally using suicide bombers to spearhead combat missions.

    "The level of damage to Hamas' military wing is less than the damage" to its civil infrastructure, the official said. "I think they will try to do their best to hit us, to come up with some symbolic achievement, a suicide operation or the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier."

    Hamas officials have said the Islamic militant group's fighters are resilient and that its military wing is choosing when it will engage Israeli forces.

    But the intelligence official said Israeli airstrikes had destroyed much of Hamas' rocket-launching capability. Two weeks ago, Hamas was firing about 80 missiles a day into southern Israel; the number has dropped to about 20 in recent days, On Tuesday the military said 18 rockets and mortars landed in Israel.

    "The civilian populations in some cases are trying to prevent the rocket squads from launching in their areas," the official said, suggesting that Palestinians were weary of the Israeli incursion, which on Tuesday included about 60 airstrikes. "They're trying actively and physically to prevent it."

    An Israeli army lieutenant colonel in Gaza told a Reuters reporter:

    "I think Hamas has already folded. A couple days ago, an armed squad popped up from a tunnel that was concealed by a nearby building. We took them out with tank fire and a bulldozer. Another time, a suicide bomber came in on a bicycle. We spotted him in time. He ran off to take cover in a building, presumably to draw us in. We demolished the building on top of him with a bulldozer."

    Human Rights Watch and other international organizations have called for Israel to allow civilians to escape the fighting and for humanitarian groups to be permitted to enter with medical supplies, food, fuel and equipment. Israel said it has allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza, but much of the enclave remains without electricity. Pleas for donations and shelter echo from the loudspeakers of mosques in the 140-square-mile coastal territory.

    The U.N. has reported that at least 60,000 Palestinians have fled their homes. The number of displaced people is expected to rise as Israeli forces squeeze Gaza City's outlying neighborhoods to further isolate Hamas militants. Palestinian medical authorities reported that at least 50 Gazans were killed and 150 wounded in Tuesday's fighting.

    Thirteen Israelis, 10 soldiers and three civilians, have been reported killed since the offensive began.

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