Gaza missile hits school bus in Israel

An anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel today, wounding two people, including one child critically, Israeli officials said.

Israeli tanks quickly retaliated by opening fire across the border, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding seven other people, Palestinian medics said.

The sudden outbreak of violence illustrated the fragile situation along the Israel-Gaza border, where small bouts of violence can quickly escalate into heavy-scale warfare.

Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the army to respond quickly and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Israeli medical services said the bus was nearly empty after dropping off school children and was carrying only the driver and a lone passenger at the time of the attack. Paramedics were trying to resuscitate a 16-year-old boy with a serious head wound at the scene. The driver was moderately wounded.

TV footage showed a yellow bus with its windows blown out and its rear end charred.

After a two-year lull, tensions have been rising between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza over the past few weeks.

Palestinian officials reported tank fire towards Gaza shortly after the missile attack. The Israeli fire killed a 50-year-old man and wounded seven people, said Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmiya.

Israel usually responds with tough reprisals to Palestinian attacks. It also launched an air strike on a Hamas training facility in northern Gaza.

The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out a series of air strikes against tunnels it said are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in a West Bank town said Israeli troops have rounded up 200 women as part of a search for the killer of five Israelis in a nearby settlement last month.

Kais Awwad, the mayor of Awarta, says the women were taken into custody in an overnight raid. He said troops fingerprinted them and took DNA samples from their mouths.

He says that as of Thursday morning, about 100 women remained in custody, along with about 50 village men arrested in earlier raids.

The Israeli military had no comment.