Mideast: Strikes are launched after bombings and shootings that targeted Jewish state's citizens.

Israeli helicopter gunships pounded the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's elite security forces in two cities late Wednesday, retaliating after a spate of bombings and shootings of Israelis. At least one Palestinian officer was burned to death, a woman was killed and dozens of people were injured, Palestinian officials said. Ariel Sharon's decision to launch a military attack, his first in three weeks as Israeli prime minister, came in response to mounting domestic pressure to crack down on Palestinian violence and despite the risk of further escalation of an already calamitous conflict. "Times are not like in the past," Brig. Gen. Ron Kitrey, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said in an interview late Wednesday. "We are not going to sit down quietly and just wait to become casualties of Palestinian terror. Enough is enough." Palestinian leaders condemned what they called "barbaric aggression," which they said was encouraged by a U.S. veto Tuesday of a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a United Nations observer force to protect Palestinians. The Israeli attacks followed the shooting death of a 10-month-old Jewish girl and three bomb blasts that killed two suicide bombers and two Israeli schoolboys--all in a 36-hour period.