Palestinian rocket injures sleeping soldiers
A rocket fired from Gaza struck a tent filled with sleeping Israeli soldiers, wounding more than 20 of them early Tuesday, Israeli medics and the army said.
The army confirmed that a rocket had landed on a base in southern Israel about a half-mile north of Gaza.
Palestinian militants in Gaza fire crude rockets almost daily at towns in southern Israel, causing panic but rarely causing serious casualties.
Eli Bin, director of the Magen David Adom rescue service, said one of the wounded soldiers was in critical condition, two were seriously injured, 25 others were lightly to moderately injured. The wounded were being evacuated to hospitals in southern Israel.
The injuries from Tuesday’s attack are believed to be the most from a single such rocket attack.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a small radical militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers have not been actively involved, but have done nothing to halt the rocket fire.
Attacks last week on the working-class town of Sderot, including one near a crowded day care center, led parents to pull their children out of school and brought demands for retaliation.
Israel’s Security Cabinet last week rejected calls for a large-scale Gaza invasion but threatened to cut water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and has mounted broad operations several times in the past, with casualties on both sides, but the rocket attacks always resumed after a pullout.
Israel continues to carry out routine incursions into Gaza to root out the rocket launchers, but the crude rockets continue to baffle the high-tech military.
source: cnn
