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Israel-Gaza violence deepens
17/01/2008 12:05 - (SA)
Jerusalem - Militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza escalated their rocket attacks on southern Israel on Thursday and Israel pounded back with air and ground fire, its leaders making it clear that they had no intention of pulling back until the assaults on Israeli border communities halt.
No serious injuries were reported on either side as the violence pushed peace efforts to the sidelines.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas's bitter rival and Israel's moderate partner in newly resumed peace talks, denounced what he called the Israeli "massacre" in Gaza.
Twenty-three Palestinians were killed in fierce clashes in the seaside territory on Tuesday and Wednesday, including the son of Gaza's Hamas strongman, Mahmoud Zahar, and a 12-year-old boy who died along with his father and uncle in a bungled Israeli airstrike. A foreign volunteer on an Israeli border farm was killed by a Hamas sniper.
Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rejects Israel's right to exist, has intensified its direct involvement in the assaults on Israel as a result of the escalating violence. The group, which had let other militant factions take the lead in attacking Israel since it wrested control of Gaza in June, claimed it fired 14 rockets early on Thursday, after launching 79 rockets and mortars on Wednesday.
Israel said five landed on Israeli soil on Thursday.
Pressure stepped up
Israeli fired at northern Gaza from the air and ground, targeting rocket squads and areas militants frequently use to fire projectiles. No injuries were reported, Hamas security said.
"We have stepped up and will further step up the pressure and the attacks on the terror activists in the Gaza Strip, and if necessary, we will step up the attacks even further, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Wednesday night.
"It isn't simple, but our goal is to stop the Qassam rocket fire."
Earlier in the week, however, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert suggested that Israel would not embark upon a broad military operation in the coastal strip. Past large-scale strikes have caused heavy Palestinian casualties without halting the rocket fire.
Militants have launched some 4 000 of the crude rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel since Israel evacuated Gaza in the summer of 2005 after a 38-year occupation. The rockets have killed 12 people since 2001 and sown panic in border areas, where people are frequently forced to rush to take cover when sirens alert them to incoming projectiles.
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