A rocket attack on an Israeli town killed a three-year-old boy and a man on Monday as Palestinian militants stepped up their assaults on Israeli targets before the removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
The attack on Sderot is the first in which one of the hundreds of rudimentary rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip in the past three years has proved fatal.
The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, called a security cabinet meeting to decide on a response, both to the rocket attack and to a daring assault on Sunday in which Palestinian fighters dug under an Israeli army post in the Gaza Strip and blew it up, killing a soldier and wounding five others.
A 15-year-old was one of four Palestinians killed in the subsequent fighting as gunmen attacked soldiers. The army responded with missile attacks on what it described as weapons factories in Gaza City.
Last night Israeli troops blew up two empty tower blocks in Khan Yunis refugee camp, close to the scene of Sunday’s attack.
Tanks and soldiers entered an area north of Gaza City after dark, apparently to prepare for an assault in response to the rocketing of Sderot.
Later Israeli helicopter gunships fired at least three missiles at a 16-storey building in Gaza City.
Smoke was seen rising from the building, which houses several media organisations, including al-Jazeera television station and al-Jeel, a media centre affiliated with Hamas.
The Israeli army said that the al-Jeel office was ”a communication centre which maintained constant contact with terrorists [and] through which Hamas claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks”.
Minutes later, missiles destroyed a metal workshop in the Gaza Strip.
Sharon said the violence would not delay the removal of about 7 500 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
He told the parliament’s defence committee the government would immediately begin offering compensation to settlers who left voluntarily. The evacuation was originally planned to begin in August.
The government says that Jews who have not left Gaza of their own accord by the beginning of September 2005 will be forcibly removed during the following fortnight. Sharon told the committee that settlers who resisted and had to be removed by the army or the police would be punished.
”Whoever assaults soldiers or policemen or adheres to calls to resist the evacuation should realise there will be a price to pay,” he said.
The Israeli opposition leader, Shimon Peres, said the government should not use the killings to hold up the withdrawal. ”We have reached a decision to pull out of Gaza, and we must carry it out, not delay it,” he said.
Afik Zahavi died on Monday when the missile landed near two nurseries in Sderot as pupils arrived for class. His mother, Ruthie, was badly hurt.
A teacher, Minnie Shoshan, told Reuters: ”I put the kids in my kindergarten into a shelter, and then I came running and saw the mother and son lying on the sidewalk on top of one another.”
Mordechai Yosopov (49) was also killed.
During the current intifada Hamas has fired 347 homemade rockets, known as Qassams, at Jewish settlements and Israeli towns within a eight kilometre range of the Gaza Strip.
The highly inaccurate weapon carries a relatively small amount of explosive and has caused few injuries.
Gideon Ezra, minister without portfolio, told Israel radio it was fortunate that no one had been killed before.
Hamas admitted that it carried out the Sderot attack. It also claimed responsibility, along with Islamic Jihad, for Sunday night’s attack on the army post, claiming it was in revenge for the assassinations of two Hamas leaders — Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi — in March and April.
The two groups have struck several blows against the Israeli army in recent weeks, seeking to show that the withdrawal of settlers is a victory for their military campaign.
While the army is keen not to be seen to pull out under fire, the recent killing of soldiers has strengthened public support for pulling the settlers out of Gaza.
A Palestinian lorry driver was shot dead by the army yesterday as he drove along a part of the road closed by the military. – Guardian Unlimited Â