Israeli Jets Bomb Gaza after Rocket Attack on Beersheva
Israeli jets bombed several Hamas camps in the Gaza Strip early Thursday after Palestinians fired a rocket that slammed into a house in a southern Israeli city, the military said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in the air force strikes or from the rocket that landed in the city of Beersheva, the first time the city has been targeted since Israel's devastating 2009 Gaza offensive.
Israeli television broadcast footage of a crater gouged out of a street next to a badly damaged house that was hit by a military grade Grad rocket.
Residents said they escaped harm after warning sirens sent them running for the bomb shelters before the missile struck. Emergency services raised the alert level in southern Israel and braced for further attacks.
Beersheva, known as the capital of the Negev Desert, is home to about 200,000 people and 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Gaza Strip.
The tit-for-tat fire comes after a day of clashes along the Gaza border in which one Islamic Jihad militant was killed and 10 other people wounded.
The military said in a statement it had "targeted a terrorist squad in the northern Gaza Strip, in the same location where rockets were fired towards the Israeli city of Beersheva."
Later, war planes bombed several other sites across the coastal strip, which the military called "hubs of terror." It gave no further details.
Palestinian sources said there were four Israeli strikes, three in Gaza City and one in the southern town of Khan Yunis. All targeted Hamas training centers.
Although Wednesday's clashes were with the smaller radical Islamic Jihad, Israel said it held Gaza's Hamas rulers responsible for the violence.
The army said it held Hamas "solely responsible for maintaining the calm in the Gaza Strip and for any terrorist activity emanating from it."
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said he saw Iran's hand in the surge of violence, trying to take advantage of the turmoil sweeping the region.
"The rocket attack was a very grave act carried out by the agents of Iran, Hamas," he told public radio.
Source: Agence France Presse
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