Israeli Defense Minister Amir Perez vowed on Tuesday that the Israeli army would continue to carry out operations in the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent Palestinian militant rocket attacks, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported.

Perez praised during a weekly cabinet meeting the Israeli military ground operation in the northern Gaza Strip early on Tuesday, saying that the army would continue operations by air, sea and land for the sake of preventing rocket attacks.

Earlier in the day, Israeli special forces killed at least seven Palestinian militants in a number of raids on Gaza and the West Bank, in an effort to prevent rocket fire in Gaza and arrest Palestinian militants in the West Bank who were wanted by Israel for alleged involvement in anti-Israel attacks.

In addition, Perez stressed that Israel had no intention to bring about an escalation of violence in the north, but added that the Jewish state was ready and prepared for the possibility that it would be forced to respond to additional attacks.

Perez made the remarks after Lebanon's Hizbollah militia and Israeli troops clashed against each other in the northern border area on Sunday, with two Lebanon-based militants killed and two Israeli soldiers wounded.

The defense minister also noted that the defense establishment currently received 10 concrete warnings of possible Palestinian militant attacks inside Israel.

Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank last summer, but the Israeli army has entered the Gaza Strip targeting rocket launch cells on several occasions.

Source: Xinhua