Israel retaliated against Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday and throughout Friday after a series of coordinated shooting, bombing, rocket and suicide attacks claimed the lives of eight Israelis in the country's south over a 24-hour period.
Some 40 Israelis were wounded in the terrorist attacks, some seriously. At least seven Palestinians, including the top leadership of the Popular Resistance Committees, the terror group responsible for Thursday's attacks near Eilat, were killed in Israel's retaliation.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the overnight air strikes had killed those responsible for Thursday's multi-pronged attack. "The people who gave the order to murder our people and hid in Gaza are no longer among the living," he said in a televised address."If anyone thinks the state of Israel will resign itself to this, they are wrong," Netanyahu added.
The attacks near Eilat, which saw a unit of 20 Palestinian terrorists leave Gaza through tunnels, travel 200 kilometers in the Sinai and infiltrate Egypt's border with Israel, underlined the volatile situation in the Sinai Peninsula since the fall of Hosni Mubarak, presenting both Jerusalem and Cairo with a serious strategic, and mutual, security challenge.
As of Friday afternoon, some 12 Grad and Qassam rockets were fired from inside the Gaza Strip at Ashdod, Beersheba, Kiryat Gat and other southern communities. Most of the rockets fell in open territory, causing no injuries or damage.
However, several Grad rockets fired from Gaza early Friday morning exploded in Ashdod's industrial zone, wounding seven Israelis, one of them seriously, with shrapnel wounds to his stomach. One of the rockets hit a yeshiva while another landed next to a children's school in the city, the IDF Spokesperon said. Another person was moderately wounded and four others sustained light injuries. All of the victims were evacuated to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot and Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. The yeshiva's building and fence also sustained some damage.
A radical Islamist terrorist group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for Friday's Grad rocket attacks.
Meanwhile, Army Radio quoted reports from Gaza saying that IAF warplanes renewed air strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday afternoon. The reports said Israeli aircraft were bombing the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City.
Earlier Friday and overnight Thursday, some 15 rockets were launched from Gaza into surrounding Israeli towns and as far away as Beersheba and communities in the Eshkol Regional Council. No casualties or damage were reported in any of the attacks, Army Radio reported.
Several of the rockets fired overnight Thursday were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket system deployed in Ashkelon. A Color Red alert was sounded in the area before the rockets exploded. Cultural and sporting events scheduled to take place in Beersheba, Asheklon and Ashdod this weekend have been canceled over fears of escalation in the region, and the IDF Homefront Command has issued safety instructions to residents of the south.
The rocket fire came after the IAF struck several Hamas targets in Gaza overnight Thursday in retaliation for a series of terror attacks earlier in the day that left eight Israelis dead and at least 31 people wounded. The latest IAF attacks killed at least one Palestinian, a 13-year-old boy, and sources in Gaza reported that 17 other people were wounded, Army Radio reported.
According to a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson on Friday, IAF aircraft attacked seven targets in Gaza overnight Thursday. In attacks on the northern Gaza Strip, the targets included a weapons manufacturing site and two terror activity centers. In southern Gaza, two smuggling tunnels were struck, as well as two terrorist activity sites. The IDF said direct hits were confirmed, and secondary blasts were identified at some of the targets.
An earlier IAF strike on Gaza Thursday evening killed the head of the Popular Resistance Committees, the terrorist group believed to have orchestrated the terror attacks near Eilat. Kamal Nirb, head of the PRC in Gaza, was killed in the IAF strike along with at least four other senior officials of the group. According to information from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) security agency, Nirb was involved in all of the organization's military activities including the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, the infiltration of suicide bombers into Israel, attacks against IDF forces in the border area and the firing of rockets into Israeli cities. Speaking after the airstrike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the person responsible for the attacks earlier near Eilat "was no longer among the living."
A statement on the PRC's website published in response to Nirb's death said, "The assassination of our leaders and our fighters will not stop the jihad and the determination to continue fighting. The Zionist enemy will not go unpunished and the blood of our martyrs will blow up in a volcano of anger."
Meanwhile, Hamas has also rejected the accusations made Thursday by Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the source of the attacks was in Gaza. Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Salah Bardawil, was quoted by Army Radio as warning against Israeli attacks on Gaza during Ramadan, and said that such attacks would trigger a sharp response by Hamas. He also said Israel is trying to blame Gaza in order to deflect attention from its domestic problems and to mitigate pressure on the government exerted by the Israeli public in the wake of recent social protest.
Egypt has also denied any connection to Thursday's terror attacks. Egyptian military sources quoted by Army Radio say that they knew nothing about what was happening, and stressed that it is very difficult to identify infiltrators at the Israeli-Egyptian border. South Sinai Governor Khaled Fouda denied reports that the source of the gunfire was in Sinai. IDF spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai also denied the Egyptian army was involved in the terror attacks. Major General Tal Russo, GOC Southern Command, confirmed that Egypt's security forces killed two terrorists on Thursday.
