Gaza rocket fire intensifies

JERUSALEM: Palestinian militants from Gaza increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel on Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet weighed options that include broader military action or efforts to renew a truce that recently expired.

More than 60 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel by the afternoon, the Israeli military said. The rockets slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, the yard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon, an Israeli factory at Nir Oz near the Gaza border, and hit a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot.

The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents, but no serious injuries. Scores of adults and children were treated for shock, the emergency medical service said.

The security cabinet meeting lasted about five hours, but no details were made public regarding any decisions about Gaza. An official spokesman for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, suggested that a renewal of mutual calm was still possible but that Israel’s patience was running out.

Israel “will answer quiet with quiet,” Regev said, “but will answer attacks with a response designed to protect our people.” Apparently preparing public opinion abroad for possible military retaliation, he said the sole responsibility for the deterioration in the south lay with Hamas.

The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, said in a statement that the rocket fire was “a response to Zionist aggression in Gaza and West Bank” and to the economic embargo Israel has imposed on Gaza.

An Israeli force killed three Hamas gunmen on Tuesday in a clash close to the border fence in northern Gaza. The military said they were spotted laying explosives. Hamas said two more members of its military wing were killed after carrying out a “jihadi” mission on Wednesday near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. The Israeli military denied that there had been any Army activity at that time, and it seemed that the two were killed by their own explosives.

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