Israeli Airstrikes Counter Hamas Missile Barrage

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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel killed two Hamas terrorists in an airstrike yesterday while Palestinian Arab terrorists bombarded southern Israel with homemade rockets as a 16-month-old cease-fire unraveled and the two sides moved closer toward a broader conflict.

The violence complicated Palestinian Arab leader Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to persuade the Hamas-led government to endorse a document implicitly recognizing Israel. In a new blow to Abbas, the Hamas prisoner who helped draft the proposal withdrew his name from the document, deepening internal Palestinian Arab divisions ahead of a July 26 referendum on the plan.

Palestinian Arab terrorists fired more than 20 homemade rockets toward the southern Israeli town of Sderot yesterday, including one that hit a school and critically wounded a man, hospital officials. A second man was lightly wounded in a separate rocket attack, officials said. Hamas claimed responsibility for most of the rockets.

“We have decided to make Sderot a ghost town,” a spokesman for the group’s military wing, Abu Ubeideh, said.

Residents demanded that the government protect them, and city authorities called off school after rockets hit the town. Late yesterday, several hundred residents demonstrated outside the home of Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

“We have many options. We have sufficient means and we will use them against every source,” Mr. Peretz told reporters. “No organization, no status will serve as cover for any source that is involved in planning or carrying out shooting.”

While Israel has halted its artillery fire against rocket-launching operations as it investigates the beach incident, it continues its more accurate air operations.

An airstrike early yesterday killed two Hamas terrorists in northern Gaza, the group said. A Hamas terrorist narrowly escaped harm later when he jumped out of his car shortly before it was destroyed by an Israeli missile, the group said.

The army said both airstrikes were aimed at terrorists carrying out rocket attacks.


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