Palestinian rockets slammed into a town in southern Israel today, killing two people hours after terrorists blew up an army post in the Gaza Strip, causing the death of one soldier.
It was the first time rockets fired from Gaza, which usually cause no serious injuries, had claimed lives in Israel.
Raanan Gissin, chief spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told WND a harsh response is forthcoming.
“This was a flagrant violation on the part of the terrorists who sent the rockets,” Gissin said. “Israel will use its full force. We will respond with impunity against those who launched this attack. Israel will chose the time and place of our response, and rest assured, it will be a very harsh response.”
Israeli security sources said two rockets hit near a school and shopping center in the working class town of Sderot. Rescue officials said a 3-year-old boy and a man, aged 50, were killed and about a dozen people wounded.
Television footage from the scene showed a child’s shoes lying in a pool of blood in the street.
“So far, Sderot had been lucky in the Qassam [rocket]attacks, but that luck ran out today,” Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio.
Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the armed wing of the militant Hamas group, claimed responsibility for the rocket attack.
In a two-pronged attack late yesterday, terrorists who tunneled under an army post in the Gaza Strip blew it up with a massive bomb and then opened heavy gun and mortar fire at rescue workers and soldiers who rushed to the scene.
An Israeli military spokesman said one soldier was killed in the blast near the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish settlements and five were wounded, one of them seriously.
Hamas and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, both claimed responsibility for the attack on the post.
They called it retaliation for Israel’s assassination of two top Hamas leaders earlier this year and the killing of an al-Aqsa Brigades leader in the West Bank on Saturday.
In another incident early today, Israeli helicopter gunships launched two separate missile strikes in Gaza City, hitting two metal workshops but causing no major injuries.
After the army post was destroyed, cheering crowds of tens of thousands of Palestinians reportedly filled the streets of Gaza City to celebrate.
Today’s rocket attacks confirmed the fears of many in the Israeli defense establishment, which has worried that Palestinian terrorists, unable to infiltrate Israel with suicide bombers, would resort to firing rockets over Israel’s security fence and into Israeli towns.
Israel has voiced fears the Palestinians are seeking to bring in longer-range mortars and Katyusha rockets that could be fired from open spaces at communities deeper inside Israel.
