Israel strikes after attacks from Gaza
Bombs fell on an area where tunnels are used for smuggling. No injuries were reported.
JERUSALEM - Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza Strip late yesterday after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened "disproportionate" retaliation for mortar and rocket attacks that injured three people in Israel.
Witnesses reported that aircraft struck the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, targeting tunnels used to smuggle goods and arms into Gaza, which is governed by the anti-Israel extremist group Hamas.
Area residents were warned by the Israeli army in recorded phone messages to leave their homes.
A police station in central Gaza Strip also was bombed, but no injuries were reported. The Israeli army said it bombed six smuggling tunnels and a "Hamas outpost."
The strikes followed tit-for-tat attacks in recent days - including a roadside bombing that killed an Israeli soldier - that have strained a Jan. 18 cease-fire which ended a three-week Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Two Israeli soldiers and a civilian were slightly injured yesterday when mortar rounds hit an army base at Nahal Oz on the border, the military said.
Police said two rockets landed in southern Israel, one near a kindergarten in a border community, but no one was hurt. A man who was walking his daughter to the kindergarten told Israel Radio that the rocket landed behind them but didn't explode.
The attacks appeared to be the work of non-Hamas factions. A wing of Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, allied with the Fatah group led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, took responsibility for firing one of the rockets. Israel has said it holds Hamas responsible for all attacks.
Taher al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government, urged all factions to "respect the national consensus" on a cease-fire declared by Hamas two weeks ago after Israel announced it was halting its offensive.
"The cabinet's position was from the outset that if there is shooting at residents of the south, there will be a harsh Israeli response that is disproportionate by nature," Olmert told a weekly meeting of his cabinet.
His use of the term
disproportionate
echoed the language of critics who condemned the scale of Israel's attacks in its war on Hamas, in which medical officials said 1,300 people were killed.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had called Israel's use of force "excessive."
Hamas is demanding the opening of border crossings kept shut by Israel and Egypt since the group seized power in Gaza in 2007. Israel wants tougher action to halt arms smuggling into the territory.
Yesterday, U.S. Army engineers arrived at Egypt's border with Gaza to set up ground-penetrating radar to detect tunnels, Egyptian officials said.