Rocket Hits Ashdod in First Strike on City since 'Truce'
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
A Gaza rocket struck the southern port city of Ashdod on Tuesday, police said, just hours after Israel agreed to abide by an Egyptian truce that was rejected by Hamas.
"The rocket struck a yard outside a house in Ashdod, several people have been treated for shock," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.
The attack was claimed by the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which said it had fired "eight Grad rockets" at Ashdod, which is home to some 212,000 people.
Earlier the Israeli security cabinet voted to accept an Egyptian proposal for a unilateral ceasefire which went into force at 0600 GMT, although it warned it would respond "with force" to any further rocket fire.
There were no immediate reports from Gaza of a military response to the fire on Ashdod, which came after three mortar shells struck open areas near the southern flank of the Israel-Gaza border.
In a statement issued around the same time, Hamas said it did not consider itself obliged by the Egyptian proposal.
"Because we were excluded from the consultations for this (truce) initiative, we are not obliged to abide by it," it said.
15 July 2014, 11:11
25
Hamas will accept cease fire after all Gaza is demolished and all its people are killed. In the first place why on earth they did hijack 3 Isr teenagers and kill them and then say we don't confirm or don't deny that we killed them! idiots should do like their enemy say we regret and we are not responsible... Anyway all those Palestinians and Syrians groups go home and don't bring us your fight to Lebanon.
15 July 2014, 14:36
00
Israeli ysuris ... Hamas did not do this and Israel know this. That the people who did this were rogue elements (likely reporting to Syrian and Iranian regimes). Hamas sat on the sidelines while Israel launched a massive operation arresting over a thousand people and killing 12.
15 July 2014, 12:39
10
if we follow your logic, let them commit mass suicide and that's it.
15 July 2014, 12:41
30
that is one option; another one is to make peace and let people live. But I guess you do not understand the language of peace.
15 July 2014, 14:27
02
what nonsense asaf. Israel pummels Gaza with massive amount of bombs, kills couple of hundreds of people and then you are crying wolf for them!!! So Israel decides when to start and when to end and under which conditions to do so!!! What bunch of thugs.
15 July 2014, 14:34
01
Asaf is part of the shameless Israli Hasbara. They lie and lie and have no shame. It is not a matter of the truth. It is a perception of the truth. Hell with all studies by the United Nations and independent NGOs showing that Israel is suffocating the economy of Gaza, that much of the population lives under the poverty line, that most do not get minimal accepted levels of water. He lives on the stolen land of the 75% of Gazans who are refugees from what is now Israel. And then he dares to lie.
15 July 2014, 14:40
00
Asaf - defensing his land. He lives in a fantasy land. So the native Palestinians they expelled are foreigners while Jewish colonists from all around the world are natives!!!!! And he really wants us to take anything he says seriously!
15 July 2014, 14:44
00
Asaf -- Despite what you may want people to believe, people adopt different languages all the time. This does give someone to dispossess them from their land, take it over and drive them to exile. What Israel did and continue to do is a crime against humanity and it has the choice: Either it will make peace based on international conventions or it will continue to face war. The Palestinians will never surrender and the Arabs (the original inhabitants of the land who constitute this polity called the Arab countries) will eventually sort out their issues.
