Gunmen cross from Egypt, kill 8 Israelis

EILAT, Israel – Gunmen who crossed from the Egyptian desert launched a series of attacks Thursday in southern Israel, killing eight people and threatening to destabilize a volatile border region that includes the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula.

Israel blamed an armed Palestinian group from neighboring Gaza. Israeli forces killed five of the gunmen along the border with Egypt, the military said, and later launched an airstrike inside Gaza that killed five other militants from the same group as well as a child.

Three blasts shook Gaza early today, including one that killed a 13-year-old boy, according to a Gaza hospital official. But the Israeli military did not immediately confirm reports of three more airstrikes targeting a security compound, a home and the area of the smuggling tunnels crisscrossing the Gaza-Egypt border.

The Israeli military said three of the men killed in Gaza had been involved in planning the attack.

Gunfire continued on both sides of the border late into the evening.

The attacks were the deadliest against Israelis since a gunman killed eight civilians in Jerusalem in 2008. They suggested that Egypt’s recent political upheaval and a resulting power vacuum in Sinai had allowed militants to open a new front against Israel on the long-quiet frontier.

The attack began shortly after noon in southern Israel with gunfire at a civilian bus heading toward the Red Sea resort city of Eilat, currently at the height of the tourist season.

A number of passengers were hit, the military said. The gunmen had crossed the border and set up an ambush along a 300-yard strip, armed with automatic weapons, grenades and suicide bomb belts, according to the military.

Within an hour, gunmen had riddled another passing bus and two cars with bullets and rigged a roadside bomb that detonated under an army jeep rushing to the scene. At the same time, mortar gunners in Gaza opened fire at soldiers along the Gaza-Israel border fence.

The Israeli dead included six civilians and one soldier.

Israeli soldiers eventually killed five attackers, the military said, and defense officials said three of the bodies were wired with explosives. It was not clear how many militants were involved or where they were from.

Egyptian security and Interior Ministry officials said a gunfight erupted on the border, and three Egyptians were killed, one police officer and two soldiers. The officials said the gunfire erupted while Israelis were chasing militants who were trying to re-enter Sinai. It was not clear if the gunfire at the Egyptians came from Israeli soldiers or the militants.

Roadblocks were erected in the area, sealing roads in and out of Eilat, and senior Israeli security officials convened an emergency session at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

Hours later, militants who had apparently gone undetected attacked again, and a member of an elite police counter-terrorism unit was killed, the eighth Israeli fatality.

Israel said the attackers had come from Gaza and made their way into neighboring Sinai and from there into Israel.

“Today we all witnessed an attempt to step up terror by attacking from Sinai. If anyone thinks Israel will live with that, he is mistaken,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Thursday.