Israeli-Palestinian violence escalates with air strikes, rocket fire and ‘suicide attack’

GAZA militants bombarded southern Israel with rockets and mortars yesterday, drawing retaliatory Israeli air strikes in an escalation of the worst hostilities in the area since Israel went to war in the Palestinian territory two years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed decisive action against militants and suggested that future operations would not be surgical.

“No state would tolerate ongoing rocket fire on its cities and its citizens, and the state of Israel obviously will not tolerate it,” he said.

Gaza’s Hamas rulers said their prime minister had been in contact with militant factions trying to keep the post-war truce from unravelling. But in the meantime, the Gaza interior ministry announced that it had evacuated security installations and scaled back the number of security forces on the street to lessen their risk of becoming targets.

The Islamic Jihad militant group said it fired rockets at four Israeli cities to avenge Israel’s killing of eight militants and civilians in Gaza the day before.

The group said one of its fighters was killed yesterday in an Israeli air strike, and Israeli police said an Israeli civilian was wounded by rocket shrapnel in southern Israel’s largest city, Beersheba.

A small faction allied with Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group claimed responsibility for a volley of mortars that struck Israel.

The killing of three children and their uncle on Tuesday, in what Israel called a mistaken shelling, dramatically escalated the recent violence.

Dozens of weeping women dressed in black gathered at the house of three of the victims. Pieces of flesh stuck to the outer wall of the house, which was pocked by shrapnel.

The civilians and the militants killed were buried in a joint funeral in Gaza City, their coffins lined up in a row in a mosque for pre-burial prayers. Dozens of armed men, including relatives, fired in the air as the bodies were brought out.

Israel and Hamas have largely observed a truce since the Israeli military offensive in Gaza ended in January 2009. But with the ceasefire fraying in the past week, Mr Netanyahu threatened to respond vigorously to the stepped-up attacks from Gaza.

Both Israel and Hamas are thought to be reluctant to engage in another war, after the last conflict killed at least 1,200 Palestinian civilians and heavily damaged thousands of homes and businesses. Thirteen Israelis also died.

But although the war inflicted heavy damage on Hamas, the Iranian-backed group has replenished its arsenal with bigger and better weapons. Last week, Israel intercepted a cargo ship that it said was loaded with sophisticated anti- ship missiles and other arms sent from Tehran to Gaza.

Meanwhile, a bomb exploded on a busy roadway in Jerusalem yesterday, killing one person and causing some 30 injuries, and police blamed the blast on Palestinian militants. It was the first such bombing in the city in seven years.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion, which Israeli police termed a Palestinian “suicide attack”.

Israeli authorities said the bomb was hidden in a suitcase near the bus stop, close to Jerusalem’s main conference hall and central bus terminal in the Jewish western part of the city.

The blast shook downtown Jerusalem in the afternoon.

Dozens of ambulances raced to the scene, a bus stop where the windows of a bus were shattered by the blast that occurred outside the vehicle. Blood stained the pavement.

“[We believe] the device weighed about 1-2 kilos... It exploded in a small suitcase on the sidewalk next to the bus stop,” Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch told Israel’s Channel 2 television.

The blast injured about 30 people and one of them, a woman, died in hospital, medical officials said.

A paramedic said he had been meeting colleagues in an office nearby to discuss the dispatch of a medical team to disaster-hit Japan when they heard a loud explosion.

“We didn’t wait even for a second, we just got up and ran to the bus station. I saw two women lying on the ground, unconscious and covered in blood,” the medic, Motti Bukchi, told Channel Two. “I can’t say what sort of injuries they suffered. They were covered completely in blood.”

After the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postponed by several hours his departure to Russia, where he will hold talks with Russian leaders in Moscow before returning to Israel today.