Hamas security detains two Islamic Jihad militants in eastern Gaza

Gaza City - Two militants preparing to fire mortars into Israel were detained Saturday by interior security officials of the Islamic Hamas movement, reported a group to which the militants claim membership. The statement, from the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, announced the arrest of their members Saturday, reporting that the two men had been arrested as they engaged an Israeli army force along the border of Israel and the eastern Gaza Strip.

Hamas, which had had de facto control of the Gaza Strip since June 2007, has stopped rocket attacks on Israel, in an unofficial, unannounced and fragile ceasefire with Israel that was reached January 18 at the end of the last Israeli military offensive into Gaza.

Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Hamas has arrested several militants from other factions trying to launch homemade rockets from Gaza at southern Israel.

The group added one of the two men is wanted to Israel and had been previously injured in an Israeli aerial attack on Islamic Jihad militants several months ago. The other is a brother of a suicide bomber who was killed near the Gaza-Israel border in 2004.

Egypt is mediating a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and working to finalize a prisoners' swap with the Islamic movement in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been in captivity in Gaza since June 2006.