Hamas denies rocket attack
A ROCKET fired from the Gaza Strip hit a house in the largest city in southern Israel early yesterday, prompting Israeli air strikes that killed a militant in the Palestinian enclave.
The attacks came a day after Egyptian mediators started a round of talks with officials from the Hamas Islamist group that controls Gaza, as part of efforts to negotiate a long-term ceasefire after months of violence along the border with Israel.
The rocket hit a two-storey house in Beersheba before dawn, the Israeli military said. It gutted most of the home, blowing out concrete walls and its stone façade, showering its yard and an adjacent street with rubble.
The family living there managed to take shelter in a reinforced room after alert sirens sounded, said officials in the city about 40km from the Gaza Strip. Another rocket launched from Gaza and aimed at central Israel fell into the Mediterranean Sea, the military said.
After the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held consultations with his defence minister and military and security chiefs at army headquarters near the Gaza border. He said unless attacks from Gaza ceased, “Israel will act with great force” to stop them.
With a nod to the Egyptian talks, Hamas and other major militant groups in Gaza took the unusual step of denying responsibility for the attack.
The groups said they rejected “all irresponsible attempts to sabotage the Egyptian effort, including the firing of the rockets”. There was no immediate claim of responsibility from any of the other smaller groups that operate in Gaza, and by mid-afternoon the area was quiet. Israeli minister Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel Radio there was evidence to back up the Hamas statement. But he said Israeli policy dictated an “immediate and forceful retaliation” against Hamas targets because the organisation controls Gaza.
The EU, in a statement from Brussels, said indiscriminate attacks against civilians were completely unacceptable and that the mortar and rocket fire by Palestinian militants must stop immediately.
Israel’s military said it struck armed training camps in Gaza and also targeted a squad about to launch a rocket.
Health officials in Gaza said a 25-year-old Palestinian man, identified by Al-Mujahedeen Brigades, a small militant faction, as one of its members, was killed. Five other Palestinians were wounded in separate attacks.
Around 200 Gazans have been killed by Israeli troops since the border protests began, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Palestinians have launched incendiary balloons and kites into Israel and on occasion breached an Israeli frontier fence. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars in the past 10 years.
The internationally-mediated peace process aimed at finding a twostate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all but moribund. | Reuters