Militant Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip have agreed to halt rocket attacks against Israel, a senior Islamic Jihad leader said Thursday.

Open gallery view Masked Palestinian militants in Gaza prepare to fire rockets into Israel in 2008. Credit: AP

"We agreed to halt one of the means of armed resistance, which is firing rockets at Israel, to avoid the Israeli threats," Dawood Shihab, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement e-mailed to journalists.

"But the armed resistance will keep active in other means such as confronting raids and incursions," he said.



However, he said, the agreement to halt the rocket attacks was only "temporary" and was "linked to the situation on the ground."



The agreement, reached Wednesday, comes amid an escalation in rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli retaliatory strikes.



It also comes two years after an escalation in rocket attacks led Israel to launch a devastating offensive against the Gaza militias, which caused widescale destruction in the salient and led to the deaths of an estimated 1,400 people.

