GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israel carried out fresh airstrikes in the Gaza Strip Thursday, persisting in a two-week-old operation to stop Palestinian Arab rocket squads from firing on Israeli border towns.

One such rocket hit a house and power lines late Wednesday in the southern town of Sderot, briefly plunging several neighborhoods into darkness but causing no casualties, Israeli media reported.

Two more rockets hit southern Israel early Thursday, and the army said Israel responded with two airstrikes. There were no injuries reported in either case.

“We will actively pursue and hit these rocket launchers as well as those who operate them. There will be no letting up and we are quite determined to see this through and protect our citizens,” said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

More than 50 Palestinian Arabs have died in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since the operation began, most of them militants. Two Israelis have been killed in the barrages of more than 270 rockets and thousands of Israelis have fled the frequently targeted town of Sderot.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the rockets, saying two Palestinians were hurt in an Israeli artillery strike on the town of Beit Hanoun. The Israeli military denied it had artillery operating in that part of northern Gaza.

But most of the rockets launched against Israel since mid-May have been launched by Hamas, the senior partner in the Palestinian government. Two members of a Hamas rocket squad were killed in an Israeli air attack on northern Gaza before dawn on Wednesday.

Israel’s Security Cabinet met Wednesday to assess the situation, and concluded that the campaign has been effective in “relatively” reducing rocket fire, Mr. Olmert’s office said.

In mid-May, at the height of the latest round of rocket barrages, about 38 projectiles were fired in a single day, the military said.

Besides striking back from the air, Israel has conducted limited ground operations inside Gaza, and arrested dozens of Hamas political leaders in the West Bank.

The latest violence is expected to top the agenda of Mr. Olmert’s meeting next week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a moderate who favors peacemaking but who has been ineffective in trying to stop the militant attacks.

Mr. Abbas has proposed a truce agreement that would commit Gaza militants to halt their rocket fire for a month to permit negotiations on a more comprehensive cease-fire including the West Bank. He also has urged militants to take the first step in forging a new cease-fire, saying the alternative would be the collapse of the Palestinian national unity government.

Militants have said a truce was out of the question as long as Israel kept up its attacks and refused to extend any Gaza cease-fire to the West Bank. Israel has so far rejected the notion of applying the truce to West Bank, especially in light of the latest round of attacks from Gaza.

Messrs. Abbas and Olmert had promised Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March to meet every two weeks to try to get long-stalled peacemaking back on track, but have only met once since, on April 15.

A Hamas delegation was to meet in Cairo with Egyptian officials this week to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian violence, as well as deadly infighting between Palestinian factions earlier this month that ceased after the Israeli airstrikes began.