Israeli aircraft attack Interior Ministry in Gaza
MIDDLE EAST: Israeli missiles tore through the Palestinian Interior
Ministry in Gaza on Wednesday, causing extensive damage, as Israel kept
up nightly air attacks to pressure militants to release an abducted
soldier.
The air strike, which wounded at least 3 people, was launched hours
after militants from the governing Hamas movement fired a rocket into a
main Israeli city for the first time, an attack that deepened a
10-day-old crisis.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert planned to consult with his
security cabinet later in the day on stronger military action following
the attack on coastal city of Ashkelon, government officials said.
Gaza residents were shaken from their beds by the now-familiar sound
of a massive explosion as shrapnel and rubble flew from the five-story
Interior Ministry building. The air raid damaged upper floor and
adjacent apartments, where medics rushed children suffering from shock
to hospital.
Another Israeli air strike targeted an empty school in northern Gaza
which a military spokeswoman said was used by Hamas activists at night.
There were no reports of injuries.
In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli aircraft attacked a training camp
used by Hamas militants. Palestinians said the facility had been
abandoned before the strike.
Israeli aircraft struck the same Interior Ministry complex on June
30, five days after gunmen from Hamas's armed wing and two other
factions snatched Corporal Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid into
Israel from Gaza.
The army said an upgraded Qassam rocket, powered by two engines
instead of the usual single motor, and flying 12 km (7 miles), slammed
into a school yard in the centre of Ashkelon, a city of about 115,000
and the site of a main power plant.
No one was hurt, but Olmert made clear militants had crossed a red
line in their deepest rocket attack yet into Israel.
"This is an escalation without precedent in the terrorist war waged
by the Hamas movement that now controls the Palestinian Authority,"
Olmert said in a speech at a U.S. Independence Day celebration at the
American ambassador's house.
"This (rocket) attack ... will have unprecedented, far-reaching
consequences. The Hamas organisation will be the first to feel them," he
said, after its Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility
for the strike.
Hamas said in a statement it was not frightened by what it termed
Zionist threats. Israel has hinted it could assassinate leaders of Hamas,
whose government is under an international aid embargo, if Shalit is not
freed.
"If blood is shed in Gaza, the streets and communities of the Zionist
entity will not be spared," Hamas said. Gaza, Wednesday, Reuters |