Palestinian rocket fire into Israel renews war fears

PALESTINIAN rockets struck deep inside Israel, landing closer to the urban sprawl south of Tel Aviv, and Israeli aircraft pounded targets in Gaza in a surging conflict that has raised fears of a new war.

Israeli police said long- range Grad rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip hit Ashdod and an area north of the Mediterranean port. There were no reports of casualties.

Emergency services said one of the rockets landed near Yavneh, a town 45km from Gaza and 20km from Tel Aviv. That area came under rocket attack in the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war.

Violence along the Gaza border has worsened in recent days and a bomb attack on Wednesday in Jerusalem that Israeli police blamed on Palestinian militants killed one woman and injured 30 people. It was the first such bombing in the city since 2004. The victim was identified as a British tourist.

The Israeli military said five rockets and a mortar bomb from Gaza exploded in Israel, causing no casualties. Schools remained closed in Ashdod and in Beersheba, a city in the Negev desert struck several times in the past week.

Israeli aircraft carried out a series of strikes in Gaza, attacking smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, a Hamas training camp, a rocket crew and a power transformer, causing blackouts in the enclave.

Medical workers said no one was injured.

Israel says the air strikes have been a response to rocket barrages. Hamas says its attacks in the past week have been in reaction to Israeli strikes. Five Palestinian militants and four civilians, three of them children, were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza on Tuesday.