RAFAH (Gaza Strip), Jan 25: Hamas militants on Friday used a bulldozer to open new breaches on the border with Egypt where security forces had tried to retake control and stem a three-day flood of Palestinians seeking food and supplies.

The earthmover opened two new breaches in the frontier a few dozen metres (yards) apart as Egyptian police stood by powerless to intervene, having earlier used electric batons and water cannon in a bid to herd Palestinians back into confinement in Gaza.A security source said an Egyptian border guard had been lightly hurt when he was hit in the foot by a Palestinian bullet and transferred to hospital.

Hundreds of Palestinians, who had been chanting pro-Hamas slogans while waiting to go into Egypt to stock up on goods, seized the opportunity and crossed the border on foot, in donkey carts and by car, defying Egypt’s 1300 GMT deadline for everyone to go home.

Police had earlier blocked Gazans from crossing over into Egypt through the largest of the breaches which militants blew in the border wall on Tuesday night in the divided frontier town of Rafah, sparking an exodus of hundreds of thousands.

Egyptian security forces used electric batons to push back those trying to get into Egypt and to herd others back into the Gaza Strip, witnesses said, as Egyptian armoured vehicles arrived with coils of barbed wire in readiness to reseal numerous minor border breaches.

The security forces also barred trucks of goods carrying everything from blankets to motorbikes from crossing the Suez Canal on their way from Cairo to replenish Rafah’s depleted stocks.

“I only spent an hour there because the Egyptians told us that the frontier would be closed,” said Um Nidal as she returned to Gaza after visiting her son in El-Arish whom she had not seen for years. Salim Waqad, 53, and his wife also went to see their son in El-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai, some 45 kilometres from the border.

“We did some shopping as well,” he says, brandishing shopping bags full of washing powder and potato chips. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough money to buy anything else.” The move to close the border came as an Israeli air strike killed the Hamas military commander for Rafah and one of his lieutenants early on Friday.

Two other members of the military wing of the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza were also killed during Thursday night when two Israeli missiles slammed into their jeep, medical sources said.

Witnesses and Hamas security sources said that Egyptian police had set up checkpoints to prevent Palestinians travelling to El-Arish.

The United Nations said at least 700,000 Gazans have poured into Egypt to stock up on desperately needed supplies since the border was blasted open on Tuesday -- nearly half the territory’s population of 1.5 million.

Hamas insisted that Tuesday night’s destruction of the border wall was a spontaneous act, as representatives meeting in Damascus called for Egypt to keep the border open.

“Right from the start our government didn’t intervene. This was a popular act,” Taher al-Nunu, spokesman for the non-internationally recognised Hamas government said.

“The government feels that the resolution of this problem will come when the Rafah crossing is officially opened for people and goods,” he said.

A meeting of Palestinian radicals in Damascus, including Hamas, meanwhile also called for Egypt to leave the border open.

“We ask Egypt to reject the US and Israeli pressure and not close the border with Gaza but instead impose Egyptian and Palestinian sovereignty on the Rafah crossing,” the factions said after a three-day meeting in Damascus.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government last week blocked fuel and aid shipments into Gaza amid an explosion of violence which has seen 45 people, most of them militants, killed in Israeli raids over the past 10 days.

Israel says its action is aimed at halting militant rocket fire on its territory, with 10 people lightly wounded over as many days from a barrage of 200 rockets or mortar rounds.

The fighting has threatened Israeli-Palestinian peace talks which were relaunched amid great fanfare at a US conference two months ago but have faltered since.

Israel has progressively tightened restrictions on movement in and out of Gaza since June 2006, when militants from the territory seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid. He remains in captivity.

After Hamas — a group pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state — seized control of the territory following its defeat of forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Israel sealed Gaza to all but humanitarian aid and basic supplies.

The Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only border post that bypasses Israel, has been closed almost continuously.—AFP