Israel warns Gaza militants after rocket strike
ZIKIM, Israel (AFP) — Israel warned Gaza militants on Tuesday after a rocket smashed into an army base, wounding dozens of sleeping conscripts and piling pressure on the government to hit the Hamas-run area.
At least 69 soldiers sleeping in tents were wounded when the homemade rocket crashed in the dead of night into Zikim base in southern Israel not far from the border with Gaza, an army spokesman and medics said.
It was the bloodiest Palestinian rocket strike from Gaza in months and came ahead of the start of the Jewish New Year, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet to take action to stop such fire.
The premier met senior ministers and military chiefs to decide on a response to the attack which Hamas -- a group sworn to Israel's destruction -- called "legitimate resistance."
"Those who carry out these types of attacks, as well as those who support them, should know that they are not safe," Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin told AFP.
No formal announcement was made after the meeting, but Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters that "we have not only military tools that we can use in the face of what's happening in Gaza."
This appeared to be an allusion to earlier calls by ministers for Israel to cut electricity, fuel and water supplies into the territory, measures that Olmert has so far rejected.
Many of the wounded troops were conscripts due to complete their basic training on Tuesday. Most of them received only light injuries, although the army said one was wounded critically and four seriously.
The military wing of the radical Islamic Jihad -- which is behind most rocket firings into Israel -- claimed the attack and dubbed it "The Dawn of Victory."
"The resistance is the only alternative to recover our rights and liberate our holy places," senior Jihad official Abu Hamzeh told a news conference.
Hamas, which seized control of the territory nearly three months ago after a week of bloody battles with the rival Fatah faction of president Mahmud Abbas, praised the strike.
Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said it was "legitimate resistance in the face of Israeli aggression and the legitimate defence in the face of Israeli crimes."
Hours later, a Palestinian man and three of his children were wounded when an Israeli tank shell hit their house in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanun, medics said.
Israel carried out an air strike near Beit Hanun later on Tuesday after Palestinian militants fired two rockets that landed in open area of the Jewish state, sources on both sides said. There were no casualties.
Militants in Gaza regularly fire rockets into Israel, but the projectiles -- nicknamed Qassams after Hamas's armed wing -- are often inaccurate and most land in the open.
Twelve civilians have been killed by rocket attacks since the second Palestinian uprising began in 2000. The most recent fatalities were in May, when two Israelis died in separate attacks.
"The time may be approaching where it will necessary to launch a major ground operation to stop the rocket fire," Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned recently.
Israel has been unable to stamp them out, despite launching regular strikes and incursions into the crowded and impoverished territory since it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.
A major five-month Israeli operation launched inside Gaza last June after militants there seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid killed hundreds of Palestinians but failed to halt the rocket attacks.
After Tuesday's strike, Israeli Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai called for the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference expected in November to be postponed, saying "this type of conference cannot but fail and result in a new intifada."
US President George W. Bush called for the conference following the bloody Hamas takeover of Gaza, which split the Palestinians into two separate entities, with the Islamists ruling the coastal strip and Abbas having a power base in the occupied West Bank.
Abbas and Olmert have held regular meetings to try to hammer out some sort of an agreement on the most contentious issues of the decades-long Middle East conflict before the conference.
Visiting French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called for the dialogue to continue despite Tuesday's rocket strike.
"The dialogue with the Palestinians who wish for peace, ie Abu Mazen, must continue," he told a joint news conference with Livni.
The Palestinian president meanwhile arrived in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for talks with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in the region before the US-sponsored conference.
