“The two Qassam-type devices were fired from the northern Gaza Strip and landed in the western Negev,” a military spokeswoman said, referring to the crude, homemade rockets used by Palestinian armed groups.

Gaza militants have fired more than 160 rockets and mortar rounds on Israel since the end of a massive Israeli offensive at the turn of the year aimed at halting the projectiles, shaking the ceasefires that ended the fighting.

Israel has in turn launched several air strikes at suspected militants, weapons caches, and smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.

On Thursday Hamas said the “resistance movements” had nothing to do with the recent rocket fire and vowed to combat such activities, saying they came at a “bad time.”

Egypt has been struggling since the war ended in January to mediate a more lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a prisoner exchange to return an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in June 2006.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since June 2007, when it violently drove out forces loyal to the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas.

Two Gaza rockets hit Israel: military

There was no initial claim of responsibility for the attack, which triggered warning sirens in parts of northern Israel, and police said no one was hurt.

On Thursday, a similar salvo hit northern Israel but Lebanese and Israeli officials were quick to play down that incident, blaming not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas, but smaller, Palestinian groups in Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah fought a month-long war in 2006.

“Three rockets fired into Israel landed outside the city of Kiryat Shmona,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about Wednesday’s incident in the Galilee.

Security sources in Lebanon said five rockets were fired and two fell in Lebanon. Witnesses in south Lebanon said Israel responded with artillery fire. There were no immediate reports of casualties or further Israeli military action.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Cairo at the start of a major diplomatic push to end the war in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been battling Hamas Islamists for 19 days in a bid to end their rocket fire on its towns.

Israeli troops edged closer to the heart of the city of Gaza on Wednesday morning and international organisations expressed growing concern about the plight of children trapped there.

The Palestinian death toll rose to 971, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, counting some 400 women and children among those killed. Israel says 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians hit by Hamas rockets fired across the border have been killed.

Sporadic explosions, machine gun fire and the wail of ambulances pierced the night after Israel’s senior general said more work lay ahead for his troops in their stated mission of stopping the Hamas rocket attacks.

Israeli aircraft attacked about 60 targets, including Hamas police headquarters in the city of Gaza, eight squads of gunmen, five rocket-launching sites and some 35 weapons smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border, the military said.

Three rockets fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel, causing no casualties, emergency services said.

RED CROSS APPEAL

The head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited the densely populated Palestinian enclave on Tuesday and said what he saw was shocking.

“It is unacceptable to see so many wounded people. Their lives must be spared and the security of those who care for them guaranteed.” ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said.

He urged both sides to spare civilians and let aid workers do their work.

The chief U.N. aid official for Gaza appealed to the international community to protect Gaza’s civilians, saying nowhere in the territory of 1.5 million people was safe any longer with the conflict becoming “a test of our humanity”.

Trying to end the bloodshed, Ban planned to meet leaders in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria. He has indicated he will have no direct contact with Hamas.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban also would “demand that urgent humanitarian assistance be provided without restriction to those in need”.

In Cairo, a Hamas delegation resumed talks on a ceasefire plan proposed by Egypt, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel and has made peace with the Jewish state.

Hamas says Israel must pull back all its troops under a ceasefire and end the blockade of the Gaza Strip that it tightened after the group seized the coastal enclave from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

Israel has rebuffed as “unworkable” a U.N. Security Council ceasefire resolution last week and said a truce must ensure Hamas cannot rearm through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

Israeli tanks have moved closer to the densely populated downtown area of the city of Gaza, but have not entered, residents said.

Human rights groups have reported shortages of vital supplies, including water, in the Gaza Strip. A fuel shortage has brought frequent power blackouts.

Israel has permitted almost daily truck shipments of food and medicine. But Human Rights Watch said Israel’s daily three hour break in attacks to facilitate the supply of humanitarian aid to Gazans was “woefully insufficient”. (Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Beirut bureau and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Rockets from Lebanon hit Israel amid Gaza fighting | International | Reuters

Its fighters launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel and seized two more soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.

It was seen as a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, but Israel’s response was far more dramatic and devastating to Lebanon.

Hezbollah said it wanted to exchange the two soldiers for thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

What it got was a 34-day onslaught from the Israeli military, costing more than 1,000 lives, mostly Lebanese civilians.

About 160 Israelis were killed, mostly soldiers, in fighting and rocket fire from Hezbollah. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were displaced on either side.

Events in Lebanon during the summer of 2006 ended up completely overshadowing what had been going on in Gaza.

Intense speculation

We are now nearly two weeks into Israel’s campaign to hit the Hamas militant movement in Gaza, an attempt to reduce rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The news of rockets being fired from Lebanon will have raised alarm of a possible serious escalation in this bloody New Year period.

Intense speculation has focused on whether or not Hezbollah was responsible for Thursday’s rocket fire or whether it was Palestinian militant groups in exile in refugee camps in Lebanon.

Most analysts have concluded it is unlikely to be Hezbollah – despite recent fiery rhetoric from the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah about the possibility of renewed conflict with Israel.

For a start, there has been no Hezbollah claim of responsibility, which is not the group’s usual style.

It has a reputation, even among Israelis, for being the most credible conveyor of information about its activities – when it chooses to convey such information.

Political timing

There is also the question of the scale of the attack – so far it is much smaller than in July 2006, and it is widely thought that Hezbollah would be capable of a much heavier blow if it had wanted.

The rockets seem to be short-range, and probably were fired from south of the Litani river, which is under control of the Unifil peacekeeping force and the Lebanese regular army.

It has been like this since the 2006 ceasefire which determined an end to all armed activity by militants between the Litani and the Israeli border.

It is widely assumed that Hezbollah still operates under cover in this area, but it is doubtful at this time that they would attempt such a blatant challenge to UN authority.

This is because the group is now part of the Lebanese government – with a power of veto on legislation – so it would be unlikely to want to jeopardise that position.

Another question regarding such attacks is whether Hezbollah somehow assisted, as they are launched from an area where – by reputation – not a leaf can move without its people knowing about it.

If so, the latest attack may be a way for Hezbollah to show solidarity with Gaza without provoking a massive Israeli retaliation.

After all, last year Israeli officials threatened that any attack from Hezbollah would trigger that would a retaliation against all of Lebanon that would make 2006 seem mild.

Difficult terrain

So who would attack Israel like this? Lebanon plays host to 400,000 Palestinian refugees, a reservoir of anger and militancy fuelled by 60 years of exile from what they consider as their land.

There are large refugee camps around Tyre and Sidon in southern Lebanon and militant groups have been known to launch rockets at Israel.

The last occasion of rocket fire was in January 2008, which was linked to the visit of US President George W Bush to Israel.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for that attack and the Israeli military blamed an unnamed Palestinian organisation.

But the incident showed the Unifil/Lebanese army regime was not in total control south of the Litani – notoriously difficult terrain to secure completely, as the Israeli army found to its cost during its long occupation of the area.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Who is behind the Lebanon rockets?

Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman, said it was unrealistic to expect Israel to agree to a plan “with no mechanism to enforce the cessation of shooting and terror from Hamas”.

Israel’s security cabinet met on Wednesday to discuss the proposal made by France, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

“That proposal contained no guarantees of any kind that Hamas will stop the rockets and smuggling,” Palmor said.

Four Israeli citizens have been killed in rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip since Israel began its offensive on Saturday.

Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said a “durable” solution was needed rather than the “band-aid” that would be provided by a 48-hour truce.

What we need is a solution that will create real quiet … the only people who really wanted this were Hamas, because we have been hitting them hard and they’d like time to regroup and rearm,” he told Al Jazeera.

“To go through all this again a month from now will do no one any good, not the Palestinians in Gaza, not the Israelis living in the south facing the brunt of these incoming rockets.

Israeli bombardment

The decision to continue the war on Gaza came as Israeli jets hit targets across the territory, adding to the misery of civilians trapped in the densely-populated strip, much of which is without power as food supplies run dangerously low.

Early on Wednesday a Palestinian medic was killed when his ambulance was hit by an Israeli missile.

Witnesses reported other missiles hitting Hamas positions in Gaza city as well as the network of tunnels used for smuggling both basic supplies and weapons under the Gaza-Egypt border.

“Over the past 18 months those tunnels have really become a lifeline for the Palestinian people, but during these five days the tunnels have been destroyed,” Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Gaza City, said.

“Things are starting to run very low because not enough is coming through the crossings.”

A senior United Nations official said it was crucial that the bombardment was halted so that fuel and fuel could be delivered to the strip.

“Conditions for parents and children in Gaza are dangerous and frightening. We are in a life or death situation for many people today,” Maxwell Gaylard, UN humanitarian co-ordinator, said in a statement.

“Without the violence stopping, it is extremely difficult to get food to people who need it. We cannot assess where the most urgent needs are, and it is too dangerous for civilians to leave their homes to seek urgent medical treatment, buy supplies and assist people in distress.”

Nearly 400 people, including dozens of civilians, have been killed and at least 1,600 injured as Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships have dropped hundreds of bombs and missiles.

Hamas warning

The armed wing of Hamas warned that it would step up rocket attacks against Israel if the bombardment was not ended.

“We tell the leaders of the enemy – if you continue with your assault, we will hit with our rockets further than the cities we have hit so far,” a masked spokesman for Izz-e-din al-Qassam Brigades said in a televised statement.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said that the Israel military were continuing to move men and machines to the border with Gaza amid ongoing concerns that the assault will escalate into a ground offensive.

“Tanks and armoured personnel carriers are being brought on the road by low-loaders and then moved into a field where a small army camp has been set up,” he reported from southern Israel.

“They are making it clear that if they wanted to have a ground assault they could do it and they certainly have the people in place to go ahead with that.”

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said that the international efforts to halt the fighting were heavily unbalanced in favour of Israel.

“The current efforts aimed at ending the combat and installing a ceasefire put the executioner and the victim on equal footing,” he said in a statement.

“International and Arab efforts must focus on ending this aggression, opening the border crossings and rebuilding Gaza,” he said.

Diplomatic efforts

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, made two telephone calls to Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, on Tuesday appealing to him to consider the truce, two senior officials in Barak’s office said.

The European Union added it voice to calls from the United Nations Security Council and the Middle East “Quartet” to end to the violence.

“There must be an unconditional halt to rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel and an end to Israeli military action,” an EU statement said.

“There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Gaza or elsewhere.”

Kouchner said on Wednesday that he and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, were considering visiting Israel in an effort to halt the fighting next week.

Other efforts to resolve the crisis were also taking place with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, visiting the region and Arab foreign ministers due to meet in Cairo.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Israel rules out immediate truce

Hamas said Israel bombed a mosque in Gaza City early on Sunday. Medics said two Palestinians were
killed in the attack.

Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on Saturday, destroying Hamas police stations and interior ministry buildings.

It was the deadliest day in Gaza for decades, with Israel continuing to attack sites into the night and threatening that the operation would widen if necessary.

Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, described the assault as a war on Hamas, the Palestinian faction which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Members of the Israeli cabinet say the attack is in response to an increase in the number of home-made rockets being fired into southern Israel since a ceasefire ended on December 19.

Carnage
Gaza witnesses reported heavy damage after more than 30 missiles were fired from helicopter gunships and fighter jets on about 40 different locations in the strip.

Many of the dead in the series of attacks were police officers, including Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.

The toll is expected to rise further, with bodies still lying buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Hospitals, already suffering from shortages due to an 18-month blockade on the Gaza Strip, said they were struggling to cope with the number of injured, which included women and children.

Gaza is densely populated. Its 1.5 million residents area already experiencing shortages in power and basic supplies due to the siege which is widely condemned by human rights movements as a collective punishment.

Ugly massacre

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called the assault Israel’s “ugliest massacre”.

“I call on Palestinians to remain united and together in the face of this crime, in the face of this massacre and continued aggression, targeting our soil and our citizens,” he said.

Olmert, speaking in Tel Aviv on Saturday, said the operation would take time and called on Israelis to be “patient”.

“The quiet we offered was answered with mayhem. Our desire for calm was answered with terror,” he said.

“You are not our enemies. We do not fight against you,” Olmert said in a direct address to Palestinians.

“[Terror organisations] are disastrous for both peoples. Israel is not fighting against the Palestinian people, and the targets attacked today were chosen with the intent of avoiding civilian casualties.”

Long operation

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Jerusalam, said: “People have been forewarned about further operations of this intesnsity for many days to come, with more sorties flown by Israeli planes and helicopters and more targets in Gaza.

“In response, more than 50 rockets were fired into Israel today. Defence officials are warning that there could be as many as 200 rockets fired every day into Israel in the days to come.”

One Israeli was killed in rocket fire on Saturday.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the attack and demanded an immediate cessation.

Many leaders added their voices to condemn the onslaught, including Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN, who called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

Mousa Abu Morzouz, the deputy leader of Hamas, said: “Nobody in this world can accept what happened and the Israeli aggression … [we expect] the international community to stand against this and say that it is not acceptable.”

Mustafa Barghouthi, the former Palestinian information minister, said: “This is not an attack on Hamas. It is an attack on the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza.”

He accused Israel of committing “war crimes” and demanded that Abbas and his government stop all relations with Israel.

‘Only just beginning’

The Israeli army released a statement on Saturday saying “terrorist installations” were hit and that all Israeli pilots returned unharmed.

Avi Benayahu, an Israeli military spokesman said: “The operation against Hamas is “only just beginning”.

The air raids follow a breakdown of a six-month-old Israel-Hamas truce earlier this month.

The ceasefire expired on December 19, with Hamas arguing that Israel had violated the truce by preventing vital supplies from entering the Strip.

Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip to receive injured people, Egyptian officials said. Ambulances have been sent to the crossing and two Egyptian hospitals emptied to take in the wounded.

Hamas won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2005. The international community refused to accept a Hamas-led government, demanding that the faction recognise Israel and renounce violence. Economic sanctions by the EU and US followed.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after bloody street battles against its rival, Fatah.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Israel continues Gaza air strikes

Israeli jets and helicopters hit security compounds and buildings in a wave of strikes which began just after midday local time and continued into the night.

Israel said more than 100 tonnes of bombs were dropped on dozens of targets in two intense waves of airstrikes.

There were many civilian casualties, as well as some top Hamas officials. Emergency services were overwhelmed and bodies were dumped in piles outside the main hospital. Frantic crowds gathered to look for loved ones amongst the dead.

Gaza has not seen so many casualties in a single day since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel says the strikes are in response to almost daily rocket fire by Gaza militants, which has intensified since Hamas ended a six-month-old ceasefire a week ago and killed an Israeli man in the town of Netivot overnight.

Israeli leaders say the air raids are against Hamas and not the people of Gaza, and only military targets have been selected.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called in Damascus for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel and promised new suicide attacks.

Meshaal called for a “military intifada against the enemy” and said “resistance will continue through suicide missions.”

In a televised address, the leader of the Hamas administration in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, called the attack a massacre.

“There is an Israeli plan behind this ugly massacre, the like of which Palestine has never witnessed,” he said.

“By targeting those innocent youths, children, women and the elderly, this plan aims to destroy an historic resistance. Even if you killed thousands of us, you would never kill our pride and our resolve.”

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Fox News that Israel “cannot really accept” a ceasefire with Hamas.

“For us to be asked to have a ceasefire with Hamas is like asking you to have a ceasefire with al Qaeda. It’s something we cannot really accept,” he said in an interview from Tel Aviv.

Asked whether Israel would follow up the air strikes with a ground offensive, Mr Barak said, “If boots on the ground will be needed, they will be there.”

“Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game,” he said.

Death toll rises as Hamas vows revenge – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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Full Coverage: Attacks on Mumbai

The identities of those killed in the two attacks — the latest in a stepped-up U.S. campaign in the lawless region close to the Afghan border — were not known.

Meanwhile, the government said an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group was suspected of helping carry out the September suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the capital.

Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik’s charge against Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was the first time Pakistan has blamed a specific group for the bombing, which killed more than 50 people.

Monday’s missiles struck about five miles apart just south of Wana, the main town in the South Waziristan tribal area, local security official Bakht Janan said. A house and a vehicle were destroyed in the attacks, which killed four people at each location, he said.

Witnesses told the Associated Press that an antiaircraft gun mounted on a vehicle fired on one of the drones before it launched a missile.

The United States has carried out more than 30 missile strikes since August in Pakistan’s lawless, semiautonomous tribal areas, targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters blamed for attacks in Afghanistan.

Although the missile strikes have killed scores of insurgents, Pakistan has criticized them as an infringement of its sovereignty and says they undermine its battle against extremism.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, said he had no information on the Monday strikes. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad could not be reached for comment early Tuesday. The United States rarely confirms or denies such attacks and has pushed Pakistan to clear out fighters in the tribal areas.

Pakistan has arrested three people in the Sept. 20 Marriott truck bombing, but no one has been formally charged.

Malik told lawmakers that assailants packed explosives into the truck in Jhang town in Punjab province, south of Islamabad. He said Lashkar-i-Jhangvi “assisted” with the plot, but he gave no more details.

Experts say the Sunni insurgent group has formed links with al-Qaeda in recent years. The group has been accused of attacks against minority Shiites across the country, Westerners in Karachi and two assassination attempts against then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2003.

washingtonpost.com

The attack hit a suspected militant hide-out in North Waziristan, near the Afghanistan border, the officials said.

The strike comes two days after Taleban rebels in the area warned of reprisals if such attacks continued.

There is widespread anger in Pakistan at the increasing use of missile strikes along the Afghan border.

Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of the Punjab region and head of a key political party, said the US was raising tensions between Islamabad and Washington.

“This is creating anger in Pakistan. This is creating friction between our two countries,” he told the AFP news agency.

‘Sovereignty violated’

There were conflicting reports about exactly who was killed in the latest attack, although several reports said at least five people died.

One report suggested four of the five killed were militants, several of them foreigners. Another said three of the five were children.

Two or three missiles were reported to have been fired from a drone aircraft, destroying a “militant hideout in the village of Alikhel in North Waziristan,” AFP quoted an unnamed senior security official as saying.

BBC NEWS

The strike happened about 12:10 p.m. in a village in North Waziristan, a region near the Afghan border that is rife with Islamic extremism, the sources said.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Wes Robertson, acting spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, had no comment on the suspected strike.

Suspected U.S. military strikes against militants in Pakistan have sparked outrage in Pakistan’s new national government.

On Monday, Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, and its prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, met with U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. military commander for a region that includes Pakistan and Afghanistan. Petraeus said he heard complaints from senior Pakistani leaders about U.S. military attacks on targets in Pakistan.

One week ago, on October 31, two suspected U.S. missile strikes killed 28 people in northwestern Pakistan, military sources and local intelligence officials told CNN.

Those attacks happened just days after Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. ambassador, Anne Patterson, to lodge a complaint about missile attacks it believes have been conducted on Pakistani soil by unmanned U.S. drones.
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The ministry told Patterson that such attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty and should be stopped immediately. The ministry also argued that such attacks have cost lives and undermined public support for Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts.

Pakistan’s parliament passed a resolution last month that condemned any incursion on Pakistani soil by foreign forces.

CNN.com

Gaza militants pounded southern Israel early Wednesday with dozens of rockets to avenge raids a day earlier that killed six militants, but the guns quickly fell silent with neither side appearing to have much to gain from renewed hostilities.

“We have no intention of violating the quiet,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on a tour of areas bordering Gaza. “But in any place where we need to thwart an action against Israeli soldiers and civilians, we will act.”

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the group fired deep into Israel to demonstrate the price of continued aggression. At the same time, he said, Hamas had contacted Egyptian mediators to find ways of keeping the truce intact.

But late Wednesday night, Israel launched annother airstrike, killing a Palestinian militant in northern Gaza. The army said it was targeting a rocket launcher, whom the Islamic Jihad group identified as its own. The group had fired two rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot and one of its leaders, Khader Habib, declared the truce over.

Hamas, which agreed to the Egyptian-mediated truce, said Israel was breaching it.

Before the Egyptian-mediated truce in June, near daily rocket barrages played havoc with southern border towns and Israel has not found a military solution to stop them. Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes killed scores of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas, on the other hand, needs the calm to strengthen its hold on Gaza, where it seized control in June 2007, and restore its military capabilities ahead of a potential future battle with Israel.

Clashes began late Tuesday after the Israeli army burst into Gaza to destroy what it said was a tunnel being dug near the border to abduct Israeli troops. During the incursion, Hamas gunmen battled Israeli forces. One Hamas fighter was killed, prompting a wave of mortar fire at nearby Israeli targets.

An Israeli airstrike then killed five Hamas militants preparing to fire mortar shells. Hamas responded with the barrage of rockets, including one that landed in an empty area in the city of Ashkelon, some 10 miles north of Gaza.

There were no reports of injuries or property damage. The army said four soldiers were wounded, two moderately, in the fighting.

Thousands of Palestinian mourners rushed slain militants through the streets of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, waving green Hamas flags and vowing revenge.

Israeli defense officials said they had discovered a 300-yard long tunnel days ago, and concluded the passage was to be used for a kidnapping. Hamas already is holding an Israeli soldier that militants captured in a cross-border raid more than two years ago.

Defense officials said they knew the raid could jeopardize the cease-fire, but concluded Hamas would have an interest in restoring the calm.

Sporadic rocket attacks on southern Israel have persisted since the truce, but the attacks were carried out by smaller groups seeking to embarrass Hamas for preserving a truce with the Jewish state.

Continued attacks have prompted Israel to close its crossings into the coastal strip of 1.4 million Palestinians. Israel and Egypt lead a blockade on the Gaza Strip, imposed since Hamas seized power of the territory a year ago.

Israel airstrike imperils Gaza truce with Hamas – Yahoo! News