New Barrage of Rockets as Israel Weighs Gaza Options
Gaza militants on Monday fired 11 rockets at southern Israel, one of which exploded next to a house, police said, shattering an overnight calm even as Cairo sought to broker an end to 24 hours of bloodshed.
As sirens sounded across the south, Israel's top brass was examining how to put a decisive end to the latest spike in bloodshed, the second such flareup in and around Gaza in three weeks.
After a quiet night on the Israeli side of the border, the firing started up again after 7:30 am (0530 GMT), with 11 rockets aimed at Israel, two of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, the army said.
Palestinian militant groups DFLP, PFLP and PLC took responsibility for the Monday fire in a statement.
No-one was injured but one of the rockets landed in the yard of a house in Netivot, some five kilometers (three miles) southeast of Gaza City, police said, with medics treating 26 people for shock.
Following a night in which Israel attacked "a terror tunnel and a weapons facility" in north Gaza and a rocket-launching site in the south, causing no injuries, Israel's Chief of Staff Lieutenant Benny Gantz was on Monday holding a situational assessment with top military officials, public radio said.
Israel on Sunday warned it would strike with "ever-growing intensity" if the rocket fire continued, prompting Cairo on Sunday to step into its usual role as mediator to try to broker a truce, Egyptian security sources said.
The latest spike in violence, which began on Saturday, has seen six Palestinians killed, and more than 120 rockets fired at Israel, injuring eight.
Palestinian officials confirmed the truce initiative, with the armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement, and militants from Islamic Jihad affirming their readiness to observe it "provided Israel commits to doing the same."
The latest flareup began on Saturday evening, when militants fired an anti-tank missile at an army jeep, injuring four soldiers.
The military hit back, killing six Palestinians, including two militants and two minors, and injuring more than 30.
Militant groups then fired more than 110 projectiles in southern Israel, injuring four people in the town of Sderot near the border. Another 11 were fired on Monday morning.
"Hamas is responsible for the rocket fire and all other attempts to harm our soldiers and civilians, even when other groups participate. And it is Hamas that will pay the heavy price," said Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday.
"We will strike with an ever-growing intensity."
The spike in violence, which comes as Israel is in the middle of an election campaign, raised the specter of a broader Israeli military operation in Gaza, along the lines of its devastating Operation Cast Lead over New Year of 2009.
Barak said he had ordered the military to evaluate a "host of options for harsher responses against Hamas and the other terror organisations."
And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned that Israel would tolerate any further attacks.
"The world must realize that Israel won't sit by idly in the face of attempts to attack us," he told cabinet ministers on Sunday. "We are prepared to escalate our actions."
In late December 2008, just six weeks before the last general elections, Israel launched a 22-day operation in Gaza to stamp out persistent rocket fire, which claimed the lives of 1,400 Palestinians -- half of them civilians -- and 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers.
Source: Agence France Presse
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