GAZA CITY, 6 July 2006 — Israel asked its army yesterday to step up attacks in the Gaza Strip as fighters launched a second rocket attack on the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.
The rocket crashed into an open area but without causing either damage or casualties, military sources said, although Israeli public television said several people were treated for shock.
In Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was “high time” for Hamas to return an Israeli soldier whose capture has sparked an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. She called on both the Israelis and the Palestinians to exercise restraint.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Security Cabinet ordered the military to intensify air raids against Hamas as well as so-called targeted killing operations against Palestinians who launch or order rocket attacks. The army was also given the go-ahead to step up an assault on northern Gaza by surrounding two key towns and enlarging an interdiction zone to be enforced by aircraft and artillery in a bid to stave off rocket attacks.
The decisions followed the most spectacular operation against Israel since a soldier was captured 10 days ago, plunging the Middle East into fresh crisis, when Hamas fighters fired a new type of rocket Tuesday into the heart of Ashkelon.
Olmert branded the first rocket attack on Ashkelon an “unprecedented and severe escalation in the terrorist war being waged by Hamas” which he warned would have “far-reaching consequences.”
Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israel’s plans to enlarge an interdiction zone in northern Gaza would only make matters worse. “Israel is using the recent developments as a pretext to impose faits accomplis. A security zone will not solve the problem, but on the contrary, help further the escalation and complications,” Erekat said.
The EU cautioned that the army’s operations had delayed efforts to get much-needed funding to the Palestinian people, as 1.4 million people living in impoverished Gaza Strip grapple with food, fuel and power cuts.
But repeated international calls for restraint have largely fallen on deaf ears in what has become the worst Middle East crisis since Hamas came to power in March and Olmert formally took the Israeli helm in May.
Overnight Tuesday, Israeli warplanes attacked the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza City for the second time in a week, causing heavy damage and wounding four Palestinians, local medical sources said.
Israeli aircraft also pounded other targets in Gaza for the eighth consecutive night.
As dozens of Israeli tanks, bulldozers and personnel carriers edged into Gaza from the north and more forces were poised to thrust into the strip from the south, the expected major offensive appeared closer than ever.
The return of ground troops to what is one of the most densely populated areas on earth comes less than 10 months after Israel executed its historic withdrawal from the territory last September following a 38-year occupation.
Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said “systematic operations to liquidate terrorist chiefs” were the only possible response unless Palestinians halted their rocket attacks.
— With input from agencies
