Gaza missile hits Beersheba, draws Israeli retaliation (Roundup)

Feb 24, 2011, 1:07 GMT

Tel Aviv - A Russian-style Grad rocket struck the southern Israeli desert city of Beersheba Wednesday evening, witnesses reported.

The missile hit the yard of a house, whose family was not hurt because they were hiding in the building's safe-room. A siren wailing through the city had warned them. A second missile fell in the nearby town of Netivot.

A military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said it was the first time a missile fell in the city of some 200,0000 residents since the Gaza war of the winter of 2008-09.

Palestinian militants from Gaza fired at Beersheba for the first time during the three-week Gaza war, launched by Israel in a bid to curb then near-daily rocket and mortar fire from the strip that paralysed life in its southern towns and villages.

Since the Israeli offensive, sporadic rocket and mortar attacks have continued, but mostly at smaller communities in the immediate vicinity of Gaza. A small number have landed near the southern coastal city of Ashkelon.

Late Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike wounded two militants in eastern Gaza, medical sources and witnesses said.

The two were part of a group of militants trying to fire homemade rockets from an area east of Gaza city toward southern Israel.

The witnesses said that an Israeli jet fired one missile at the group, who are members of al-Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad's armed wing.

Medical sources at Shiffa Hospital in Gaza City said that the two Palestinians suffered moderate shrapnel wounds.

Some 1,400 Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed in relentless Israeli shelling from the air, ground and sea of Hamas targets in densely populated Gaza during the offensive from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009.

Since then, Israel and the Islamist movement running Gaza have largely respected an informal truce, but in recent weeks, violence has been on the rise.

Earlier Wednesday, 11 people were wounded when an Israeli tank fired a shell at another group of Islamic Jihad militants at Gaza's border with Israel. One Islamic Jihad activist later died of his wounds from the shelling.

In another incident Wednesday, a house near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis exploded, killing an 11-year-old girl and wounding four members of the same family, hospital officials said. Locals said the explosion was apparently caused by the accidental detonation of a bomb being made or handled by a militant.

Two workers collecting gravel Wednesday morning near the border between northern Gaza and Israel were wounded by gunfire from Israeli soldiers, Gaza emergency services chief Adham Abu Selmeya said.

Shooting incidents in a 300-metre-wide no-go zone along the border imposed by Israel have been occurring frequently, with soldiers opening fire at anyone approaching the border fence.

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