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Israel hits back after rocket attack

Israeli soldiers return from an operation Thursday in the Gaza Strip at the Israel-Gaza border. Israeli tanks and warplanes attacked targets throughout the Gaza Strip. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Rushdi Abu Alouf and Richard Boudreaux Los Angeles Times
Israeli soldiers return from an operation Thursday in the Gaza Strip at the Israel-Gaza border. Israeli tanks and warplanes attacked targets throughout the Gaza Strip. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a Katyusha rocket 10 1/2 miles into Israel on Thursday, their deepest artillery strike yet, provoking some of the heaviest Israeli assaults in months. Nine Palestinians were killed in the day’s fighting.

The rocket landed harmlessly on the northern outskirts of the coastal city of Ashkelon. An Israeli tank and helicopter offensive that was already under way in Gaza quickly intensified, targeting suspected arms depots and homes and hide-outs of militants, who fired back with grenade launchers and automatic rifles.

Palestinian medical workers said three of those killed were civilians – the mother, sister and brother of a militant from the Islamic Jihad group, who also died when a tank shell ripped through their home in the city of Khan Yunis. Israel said it was responding to gunfire from the house.

More than 30 Palestinians, including five children, were reported wounded as the fighting spread from Khan Yunis to Gaza City and Rafah.

A Palestinian Authority spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeneh, called the Israeli offensive “a bloody message” that could tarnish President Bush’s visit to the region next week.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the army operations were defensive, aimed at stopping rocket fire from Gaza. The coastal strip is ruled by the militant Hamas movement, which advocates Israel’s destruction and is not involved in the peace talks.

Until recent weeks, all the rockets fired from Gaza were homemade Kassams, wildly inaccurate and incapable of reaching much beyond the Israeli border town of Sderot, which has a population of about 20,000. Kassams and mortar strikes from Gaza have killed 12 Israelis in the past six years.