Israeli missiles tore through the Palestinian Interior Ministry
in Gaza on Wednesday, causing extensive damage, as Israel kept up
nightly air attacks to pressure militants to release an abducted
soldier.
The air strike, which wounded at least 3 people, was launched
hours after militants from the governing Hamas movement fired a
rocket into a main Israeli city for the first time, an attack that
deepened a 10-day-old crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert planned to consult with his
security cabinet later in the day on stronger military action
following the attack on coastal city of Ashkelon, government
officials said.
Gaza residents were shaken from their beds by the now-familiar
sound of a massive explosion as shrapnel and rubble flew from the
five-story Interior Ministry building. The air raid damaged upper
floor and adjacent apartments, where medics rushed children
suffering from shock to hospital.
Another Israeli air strike targeted an empty school in northern
Gaza which a military spokeswoman said was used by Hamas activists
at night. There were no reports of injuries.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft attacked a training
camp used by Hamas militants. Palestinians said the facility had
been abandoned before the strike.
Israeli aircraft struck the same Interior Ministry complex on
June 30, five days after gunmen from Hamas's armed wing and two
other factions snatched Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border
raid into Israel from Gaza.
The army said an upgraded Qassam rocket, powered by two engines
instead of the usual single motor, and flying 12 km (7 miles),
slammed into a school yard in the center of Ashkelon, a city of
about 115,000 and the site of a main power plant.
No one was hurt, but Olmert made clear militants had crossed a
red line in their deepest rocket attack yet into Israel.
"This is an escalation without precedent in the terrorist war
waged by the Hamas movement that now controls the Palestinian
Authority," Olmert said in a speech at a Independence Day
celebration at the American ambassador's house.
"This (rocket) attack ... will have unprecedented, far-reaching
consequences. The Hamas organization will be the first to feel
them," he said, after its Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades claimed
responsibility for the strike.
Hamas said in a statement it was not frightened by what it
termed Zionist threats. Israel has hinted it could assassinate
leaders of Hamas, whose government is under an international aid
embargo, if Shalit is not freed.
"If blood is shed in Gaza, the streets and communities of the
Zionist entity will not be spared," Hamas said.?
Israeli armor moved into the southern Gaza Strip a week ago,
taking up largely static positions at a disused airport.
Israel has also sent tanks into the northern Gaza Strip, the
main launching area for Qassam rockets. But it has stopped short of
a push into Gaza towns, where fighting with militants would likely
be intense.
After the Ashkelon attack, an Israeli Web site, Arutz 7, quoted
Defense Minister Amir Peretz as saying in an interview he had
ordered the army to step up Gaza operations to bring Shalit home
and halt Qassam attacks.
Militants in Gaza, territory Israel quit last year after 38
years of occupation, have been firing rockets daily into southern
Israel, causing few casualties.
Many have hit Sderot, a backwater town, making less of a
political impact in Israel than the attack on Ashkelon -- a city
that right-wing opponents of the Gaza pullout, which Olmert backed,
had predicted would eventually be hit.
(Chinadaily.com via agencies July 5, 2006)
