Israel hit by Gaza rocket attack
Rockets fired into Israeli city following overnight Israeli air strikes on targets in Gaza
More than 10 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel following a series of overnight Israeli air strikes on targets in the north and south of the strip in which a teenage boy was killed and more than a dozen people injured.
The action followed an audacious three-pronged assault near Israel's border with Egypt on Thursday, in which eight Israelis and at least five militants were killed in the deadliest attack in Israel for several years.
The Israeli military said two of the rockets fired by militants in Gaza on Friday caused damage and injuries at a synagogue and school in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod. S
Israel deployed its Iron Dome mobile air defence system and intercepted at least one of the Grad and Qassam rockets. Most landed on open ground.
The Israeli air force struck seven targets in Gaza in the early hours of Friday, which it said included a weapons storage unit, two tunnels used for smuggling arms and militant training sites.
Thirteen-year-old Mahmoud Abu Samra was killed and up to 18 others wounded in an air strike on a home near the former intelligence service headquarters in Gaza City, according to medics quoted by the Palestinian news agency Ma'an.
Israeli officials said the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) was responsible for the attacks near the Red Sea resort of Eilat. A large squad of militants crossed through tunnels from Gaza into Egypt, and then travelled 125 miles (200km) south through the lawless Sinai peninsula before crossing into Egypt north of Eilat, according to officials.
Although Israel has begun building a security fence along two sections of its border with Egypt, only about a tenth of it is completed and officials acknowledge the border is porous.
According to reports in the Israeli media, the IDF believe the purpose of the attack was to kidnap a civilian or a soldier. An Israeli official told the Guardian: "We knew they were out there," suggesting intelligence had picked up the possibility of an attack.
Within hours of the attack, Israeli warplanes struck a house in Rafah, a town in Gaza close to the Egyptian border and site of hundreds of illegal tunnels. Five members of the PRC were killed, including its military commander, Abu Awad Nayrab, and his two-year-old son Malek.
A PRC spokesman, Abu Mujahed, said Israel would be held responsible for "all the consequences of its crimes" in Rafah.
Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas leader, condemned the "massacre in Rafah" and told the Palestinian news agency Ma'an that "this crime won't stop the resistance and won't stop all Palestinians".
Hamas denied it had any connection to Thursday's attacks. An Israeli government official said it held Hamas responsible for "terrorism emanating from their territory".
The PRC, formed in 2000, is an umbrella group of militants, some of whom are disaffected former members of Fatah and Hamas, the dominant factions in Palestinian politics. It was one of three groups claiming to have abducted the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held captive for the past five years.
Thursday's attacks appear to be the result of careful planning and co-ordination. Six Israeli civilians and two soldiers were killed in attacks on two buses, a private car and a military vehicle involving gunfire, mortars and a roadside bomb.
on The Guardian World News: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/19/israel-hit-rocket-attack-gaza
