Israeli air strikes draw Gaza rocket fire
Projectiles fired at Israel from Gaza Strip in apparent reprisal to air raids
on the Palestinian enclave.
Last Modified: 24 Mar 2011 16:04
Wednesday's bomb attack in Jerusalem comes amid a spike in violence in recent
days [AFP]
A series of rockets have slammed into the Israeli port city of Ashdod, just
south of Tel Aviv, shortly after Israeli aircraft pounded targets in Gaza, in
an escalating conflict that has raised fears of a new war.
Israeli police said on Thursday that long-range Grad rockets fired from the
Gaza Strip hit Ashdod and an area north of the Mediterranean port. There were
no immediate reports of casualties.
"The Israeli army has just confirmed that a total of nine rockets have been
fired from the Gaza Strip," Al Jazeera's Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from
Jerusalem, said.
"Two of them were Grad rockets, one of them landed in Ashdod, the other one
just north of Ashdod - that one is the farthest these rockets have reached
since the cross border tension started eight days ago," she said.
Violence along the Gaza border has worsened in recent days.
Israeli jets staged three air strikes over Gaza, hours after a bomb struck a
crowded bus stop in West Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing one person and
wounding 30 in what authorities said was the first major attack in the city in
several years.
Hamas, the Palestinian group which controls the Gaza Strip, said on Thursday
that the Israeli strikes targeted smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt
border, as well as one of its training camps in central Gaza.
A third strike hit a power transformer, causing blackouts in the area,
witnesses said. Medical workers said no one was injured in the strikes. Hamas
said it ordered its personnel to evacuate their positions.
An Israeli defence spokeswoman confirmed the sorties, saying: "The air force
targeted two tunnels at the south of the Gaza Strip and a terrorist target in
Gaza."
The military said the strikes were a response to the recent barrage of rockets.
Jerusalem blast
Wednesday's bombing of the bus stop in Jerusalem came several hours after two
Grad rockets fired from Gaza hit the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.
"There was no immediate claim of responsibility. [...] The normal reaction is
for people to blame Palestinian groups when there is an explosion in Jerusalem,
but the police are carrying out an investigation and aren't ruling out any
possibility," our correspondent said.
Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, told Al Jazeera that a device in
a bag that was left in a phone booth near the bus station exploded when the bus
passed.
"This was not a suicide attack," Rosenfeld said.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, warned Palestinian fighters not
to test Israel's "iron will", and vowed a tough response to the bombing.
Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, warned that Israel will not tolerate
"terrorist" attacks.
Violence has spiked in recent days, with the knife slaying this month of a
Jewish settler family as they slept and the deaths of at least eight
Palestinians, including children, in Gaza by Israeli strikes on Tuesday.
Bombings have been rare in inJerusalem the past several years. Palestinians
carried out dozens of bombings in the city at the height of an uprising that
began in 2000.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
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