Israelis Kill 7 in Gaza As Hostilities Worsen

By Isabel Kershner

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting from Gaza.

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Israeli forces killed six Palestinian militants and a civilian in Gaza early Thursday and militant groups in Gaza stepped up their rocket fire against Israel, as hostilities intensified for the second time in a month.

Two brothers, one from Islamic Jihad and one from the military wing of Hamas, were killed in clashes with Israeli ground forces, while four additional Hamas members were killed in airstrikes, according to Hamas and medical workers in Gaza.

An Israeli missile hit the grounds of an agricultural school in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, killing a teacher, Hani Naim, 43, and wounding three students, according a local resident who monitors violence in the area.

An Israeli Army spokeswoman said that the forces “did not aim at the school, but at rocket launchers nearby.” The militants launching rockets “exploit the civilian environment,” she said, noting that mortar shells had been fired at Israel from a schoolyard in northern Gaza a few months ago.

Associated Press Television showed the school that was hit Thursday to be a series of huts in a rural area. A rocket launching device was visible between some olive trees, indicating that militants had used the school for cover to launch attacks, according to The AP.

Seven Qassam rockets and four mortar shells landed in Israel early Thursday, one hitting a house in the Israeli border town of Sderot and wounding two residents, the spokeswoman said.

Late Wednesday afternoon a rocket landed near a playground and nursery school in an Israeli communal farm near the border with Gaza, wounding two girls, aged 12 and 2.

Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, went back to launching its own rockets at Israel in January, having limited itself to firing mortar shells for more than half a year. In a statement issued Wednesday, the military wing of Hamas said it had fired 33 rockets and more than 30 mortar shells since Tuesday, when Israel killed seven Hamas policemen in an airstrike on a police post in southern Gaza.

The Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said Thursday that “if the Qassam fire from Gaza continues, we shall step up our activities even more and hit the other side harder, until we solve the problem.”

Set on what appeared to be a collision course with Israel, Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said that his group had “long ago adopted resistance as a strategic choice to claim our rights and principles and to protect our people, our land and our holy sites,” and that Israel’s “targeted attacks and dangerous escalations will only increase our commitment to this choice.”

The current increase in violence started Monday with a lethal suicide bomb attack in the southern Israeli town of Dimona that killed one Israeli and critically wounded another. Hamas took responsibility for the bombing.

A representative of Hamas in Iran, Abu Osama Abed Al Maati, issued a statement on a Hamas Web site Wednesday saying that the Dimona bombing had been “a message” that the group’s military wing had “renewed the suicide attacks.”

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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