A Hamas rocket attack from Gaza killed a man in Israel yesterday and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged unlimited military action against the militant group, saying ?no one involved in terror? would be immune.

Hamas?s armed wing said it had promoted members of the squad that launched the rocket into the southern town of Sderot, where it exploded on a street, spraying shrapnel into a car and causing its 36-year-old driver to slam into a wall.

He was the second Israeli to die in a rocket attack in a nearly two-week-old surge in violence, with no end in sight to cross-border bloodshed that has made any resumption of peacemaking seem even more remote.

Ceasefire

On Saturday, Israel?s air campaign in the Gaza Strip killed five Hamas militants. ?No one involved in terror has immunity - pure and simple,? Olmert said in broadcast remarks at Israel?s weekly cabinet session, after the Sderot attack.

His comments appeared to suggest that Hamas political leaders ? regarded by Israel as giving the green light to rocket salvoes from territory Israeli troops and settlers quit in 2005 ? might also be targeted in a wider air campaign.Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, said Olmert?s ?threats and the continued Zionist escalation makes any talk about calm pointless?.

Abu Ubaida, spokesman for Hamas? Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, rejected what a Palestinian official described on Friday as a proposal by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah to cease rocket attacks if Israel halted strikes in Gaza.

?Our operations are continuing and calm is conditional on stopping the Zionist aggression in Gaza and in the West Bank,? he said, reiterating Hamas?s demand for a wider truce. Israel frequently carries out raids in the occupied West Bank to detain militants who it says are planning attacks against Israelis.

In his comments to the cabinet, Olmert said Israel would not bow to any outside pressure to end its attacks, in which more than 40 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed. But he stopped short of any explicit threat of a ground offensive in Gaza, an operation some members of his government have urged him to order in the coastal territory, where militants operate in heavily populated residential areas.

?We are not acting according to any timetable that is dictated externally. We will decide where, how and to what extent we act. We are acting without any limitation or directive from anyone,? Olmert said.

The rocket that killed the man in Sderot, Hamas?s armed wing said, was its answer to ?those who described the attacks as pointless? - a reference to Abbas. Fatah and Hamas, which has spurned Western demands to recognize Israel and renounce violence, formed a unity government two months ago.

The spike in rocket strikes against Israel has been accompanied by a dramatic decrease in recent Hamas-Fatah fighting, in which more than 50 Palestinians have died.

Abu Zuhri said Hamas representatives would hold talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo in the coming days in a bid to calm Palestinian factional tensions. Fatah leaders arrived in Cairo on Saturday for similar meetings.

Jeffrey HELLER