At least three rockets fired from Lebanon exploded in northern Israel on Thursday, wounding two people, police and medics said, in an attack seen as linked to Israel’s offensive against Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip.
Israel hit back with artillery shells in what an Israeli military spokesperson described as ”a pinpoint response at the source of fire”.
It was not immediately clear whether Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas — against whom Israel fought a 2006 war — or Palestinians fired the rockets, presenting a new challenge to Israeli leaders who have waged attacks on Gaza for 13 days.
Lebanese security sources said they felt it was unlikely Hezbollah fired the salvoes. Hamas sources in Lebanon denied involvement.
Israeli forces have been on high alert in the north fearing that Hezbollah could fire rockets into northern Israel as it did in the 2006 conflict and lend support to Hamas and the Gaza Strip’s 1,5-million inhabitants.
Israeli warplanes bombed targets across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and tanks advanced in the Hamas-ruled territory as United States backing for a truce proposal raised expectations of an end to the onslaught that has killed hundreds of Palestinians.
Shi’ite Hezbollah has not opened fire since Israel started bombarding the Gaza enclave nearly two weeks ago to the south of Israel with the declared aim of halting Hamas rocket attacks.
Palestinian groups in Lebanon have also been known to fire rockets and Israeli military affairs commentators said it was more likely they were responsible for the rockets that hit the Israeli resort town of Nahariya and three other locations.
One rocket punched a hole in the roof of a building in Nahariya that Israeli media said was a home for the elderly and was being evacuated.
”I have decided on two steps — to send schoolchildren home and that people should remain in shelters,” Nahariya mayor Jackie Sabag said on Israel’s Channel Two television.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said two people in northern Israel were slightly wounded and several were treated for shock after what police said were at least three rocket strikes.
In June 2007, Palestinians in Lebanon fired two rockets that landed near the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.
Heavy bombardment
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian man who tried to set fire to a gas station at a Jewish settlement, an Israeli rescue service said. Police confirmed the shooting but not the man’s condition.
Residents in Gaza described the overnight bombardment to the east of the city as among the heaviest in the offensive. In the south of the territory tanks advanced closer to the town of Khan Younis, witnesses said.
Although Israel pressed on with the offensive, it said it accepted the ”principles” of a European-Egyptian ceasefire proposal. The United States urged Israel to study the plan.
Israel’s assault resumed after a brief pause on Wednesday to help Gaza’s inhabitants stock up on much-needed supplies.
Twenty Palestinians were killed on Wednesday, medics said, including three children in an air strike on a car. It took the total of Palestinian deaths since December 27 to more than 650 — the bloodiest episode in decades of Israel-Palestinian conflict.
UN officials have said a quarter of the Palestinian dead were civilians, while other accounts put that proportion higher.
Ten Israelis have died in the past 13 days, seven of them soldiers, including four killed by ”friendly” fire.
With both US George Bush’s outgoing administration and president-elect Barack Obama speaking out on the need for peace, officials said Israel would send an envoy to Cairo to discuss how the Egyptian plan might be implemented.
That may take several days. In the meantime, Israeli military commanders appear determined to keep up the pressure on the ground, even if a decision on whether to launch a new phase by targeting militants in Gaza’s urban centres was put off.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed Israel’s concerns that a deal must achieve its goal of stopping the Hamas Islamists who rule Gaza from hitting Israel with rockets.
”It has to be a ceasefire that will not allow a return to the status quo,” she said. Hamas said it was looking at the Egyptian plan, brokered by France, which addresses Israel’s demand that the militant group be prevented from rearming through smuggling tunnels from Egypt. The proposal also addresses Hamas’s call for an end to Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Tuesday’s killing by Israeli shells of 42 people, including women and children sheltering in a UN-run school in Jabalya refugee camp, intensified international pressure on Israel to call a halt. UN officials denied an Israeli army account that militants had been firing from the school.
Israel has said it will press on until Hamas can no longer hit its southern towns with rockets.
Israeli leaders face a parliamentary election in a month and will want to show the public that they have met that objective.
However, US involvement of the kind that helped end the Lebanon war and which was perceived as absent in the first week of the Gaza fighting may indicate that, whatever the state of combat on the ground, a ceasefire could be on the cards.
Some Israeli analysts say Israel faces a deadline to wrap up its campaign by the time Obama is sworn in, or risk a strain in ties with Washington at the outset of the new administration.
European governments have proposed backing the Egyptian ceasefire proposal with an EU force along the Gaza-Egypt border that would prevent Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, from rearming through its many tunnels.
Hamas called off a six-month ceasefire late last month, accusing Israel of breaking an agreement to ease supplies. — Reuters