The Gaza strip was bracing for a fresh Israeli military assault after a Hamas rocket attack on an Israeli town on Wednesday killed two children, one an infant.
Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed to respond ”with severity” to the attack on the town of Sderot, in which another 20 people were wounded, some of them children. Late on Wednesday evening missiles ploughed into the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing two Palestinians.
Hours earlier, a large Israeli force, sent to reoccupy a Gaza refugee camp to prevent rocket attacks, killed two Palestinian schoolboys. Another boy was shot dead by soldiers near a Jewish settlement.
The police said one Hamas rocket hit a house, killing the two children. A second rocket landed in an alley. Another hit a Jewish settlement in Gaza, lightly wounding a Palestinian worker. Residents of Sderot gathered near the area, some chanting: ”Death to Arabs.”
The attack came despite the army sending dozens of tanks, bulldozers and armoured vehicles to seize control of Jabaliya refugee camp in an attempt to stop Palestinian insurgents firing rudimentary rockets, known as Qassams, into Israel.
The military said it met stiff resistance in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad stronghold from Palestinian insurgents throwing grenades, and shooting and planting explosives. But, of the three people killed, two were 14-year-old schoolboys apparently shot as they threw stones at the tanks.
The deaths in Sderot put further pressure on Sharon to confront Palestinian insurgents before he forces Jewish settlers to leave the Gaza strip next year.
The mayor of Sderot, Eli Muyal, has said that, if European countries faced similar attacks, Palestinian towns ”would have been wiped off the face of the Earth”.
The army has launched a dozen incursions into the northern Gaza strip over the past three months, occupying Beit Hanoun for a month. But the mortar assaults on Sderot and the settlements have only intensified.
Hamas said it launched the attack on Sderot to mark the fourth anniversary of the intifada which has claimed the lives of more than 3 000 Palestinians and nearly 1 000 Israelis. — Â