Gaza rocket kills Israeli
2006-11-15 12:43
Sderot - An Israeli woman was killed by Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza on Wednesday, sparking warnings that Israel will expand its lethal four-month offensive in the coastal strip.
The 57-year-old woman died of wounds from the rocket, which fell at 08:00 in a street in the town of Sderot, five kilometres north of Gaza, police and medics said.
A 24-year-old man was seriously wounded in the strike, one of six rockets to fall in Sderot in the morning hours, one of them not far from the house of defence minister Amir Peretz who lives in the town.
The man was a member of a private security firm that guards Peretz's home, police said.
In a statement, the defence minister vowed Israel would strike against those behind the rocket fire.
"These organisations will pay a heavy price," he said. "We will move against those who are involved in the firing of rockets, starting from their leaders and down to the last of their terrorists."
Wednesday's death marked the first time since July 2005 that Palestinian rocket fire killed someone inside Israel, according to the army, and came a week after an Israeli artillery strike killed 19 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza's northern town of Beit Hanun.
Responsibility
In Gaza City, the armed wings of the Palestinian ruling Hamas movement and the ultra-radical Islamic Jihad group both said they had fired salvoes into Israel to avenge the Beit Hanun deaths, which sparked worldwide condemnation.
"This holy warrior operation comes... in response to the massacre of Beit Hanun and the continuing Zionist crimes against our Palestinian people," said a statement from Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing.
"We stress that that our strikes against the enemy are continuing, and that for each (Israeli) shelling there will be a reprisal shelling, and that blood will be beget blood," it said.
At a press conference held by five masked, armed members of the armed wing of Islamic Jihad said the group fired two rockets into Sderot early in the morning.
"The enemy admitted he had been hit at 8:20 by two rockets, and that, thank God, they lead to the death of a Zionist and the injury of others," one of them said.