Perilous
Times
Gaza militants fire barrage of rockets into Israel, testing
truce
Smoke rises after a mortar slams into the ground near Kibbutz
Nahal Oz just outside the northern Gaza Strip October 31, 2011.
GAZA | Mon Oct 31, 2011 7:25pm EDT
GAZA (Reuters) - Gaza militants fired rockets at southern Israel
on Monday, in violence that tested a shaky truce brokered by Egypt
after a border flare-up that has claimed the lives of a dozen
Palestinian gunmen and an Israeli civilian since the weekend.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said four rockets slammed into the
Ashkelon and Beersheba regions as darkness fell on Monday, while a
fifth was intercepted by a missile defense shield which witnesses
said set off a loud explosion.
There were no reported injuries.
Israel, saying it had targeted a rocket-firing squad, killed two
militants with an air strike in southern Gaza just after midnight
on Monday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing parliament at the
opening of its winter session, said Israel would use its "force
and determination" against militants and follow a policy that "if
someone rises us to kill you, you kill him first."
There were no immediate claims of responsibility issued for
Monday's rocket fire. More than three dozen other rockets fired at
Israel since the weekend were claimed by the Iranian-allied
Islamic Jihad group, a rival of Gaza's Hamas Islamist rulers.
The latest round of violence began when Israel, responding to
rocket fire at the city of Ashdod on Wednesday which set off
sirens as far as the southern reaches of Tel Aviv, attacked
Islamic Jihad bases in the Gaza Strip with aerial strikes on
Saturday, killing nine gunmen.
Islamic Jihad fired more than 30 rockets at Israel on Saturday and
Sunday, killing an Israeli man in the city of Ashkelon and
injuring at least two other people.
Egyptian officials who are often involved in efforts to mediate
between Israel and the gunmen who have no direct contact with the
Jewish state, said Sunday they were able to get both sides to
agree to a ceasefire.
There had earlier been a relatively long lull in border violence
in the run-up to a prisoner swap on October 18 in which Israel
released 477 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit,
an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ari Rabinovitch; Writing by
Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Jon Hemming)