Israel vows retaliation after Gaza rocket attack

Demand for swap of prisoners rejected

July 05, 2006|Ravi Nessman, Associated Press

GAZA CITY -- Palestinian militants hit an Israeli city with a rocket from Gaza for the first time yesterday, causing no casualties but drawing a pledge of harsh retaliation from Israel while it was already in the midst of a military offensive.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called the rocket fire on the coastal city of Ashkelon a ``major escalation," coming just hours after a deadline set by the militants holding an Israeli soldier passed with Israel rejecting demands to release about 1,500 Palestinian prisoners. The militants said they would not harm 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit -- if he is still alive. But they warned they would provide no further information about him, leaving his condition unclear.

The rocket flew 7 miles through the air and exploded in the courtyard of a school in Ashkelon, a city of 110,000 on Israel's coast north of Gaza. The school was empty at the time, and no one was hurt. School security cameras showed a large cloud of white dust rising from the point of impact.

Early today, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a Hamas camp in southern Gaza, Palestinians and the Israeli military said. Israeli warplanes also struck the Palestinian Interior Ministry for the second time in a week, Palestinian witnesses and the Israeli military said. There were no immediate reports of casualties at either the Hamas camp or the ministry.

Though militants have fired many of the small, homemade rockets in the direction of Ashkelon, this was the first one to hit the heart of the city, displaying a longer range than most previous ones and bringing the threat of rocket barrages to a major Israeli population center for the first time.

Zeev Schiff, veteran military analyst for the respected Israeli Haaretz daily newspaper, wrote that the rocket attack was ``an unequivocal Hamas invitation to war."

In the hours before the rocket attack, Israeli forces were already operating in northern Gaza looking for tunnels, explosives, weapons warehouses, and other facilities used by militants, the area army commander said.

However, the troops stayed outside Palestinian towns, as they have since Israel started its offensive in Gaza a week ago. Olmert indicated that might change in response to the rocket attack on Ashkelon.

``For this attempt that was meant to harm Israeli civilians who live in the sovereign borders of Israel, there will be far-reaching consequences," Olmert warned at a US Independence Day celebration at the home of Richard Jones, the US ambassador to Israel. ``The Hamas organization will be the first to feel this."

Earlier yesterday, before the attack on Ashkelon, Olmert made a quick visit to Sderot, the Israeli town just outside Gaza that has been the main target of the Palestinian rocket squads. He pledged to work to stop the barrages.