More than 24 rockets and mortars struck Israel on Saturday
CNN.com
8/20/2011
Jerusalem (CNN) — One person was killed and at least 12 were injured Saturday when more than two dozen rockets fired by Gaza militants slammed into Israeli cites.
It’s the latest in the ongoing tit-for-tat violence between Israel and militants over the past three days.
The fatality occurred in Beer Sheva, according to Eli Bin, an emergency official in the region. Four people were seriously injured and two suffered moderate wounds when rockets struck a house and car. An unknown number of trauma injuries were being transported to the hospital, Bin said.
Hamas militants in Gaza claimed responsibility for a volley of rockets that struck Ofakim, 25 kilometers west of Beer Sheva.
Two children and a man were injured when one of the rockets directly hit a building, Bin said.
Hamas’ armed wing, the Izzedine al Qassam Brigades, said it fired four long-range Grad rockets at Ofakim.
A long-range missile struck the Israeli port city of Ashdod, injuring three people, authorities said.
The attacks followed overnight airstrikes that targeted what Israeli security officials said were militant sites in Gaza.
Earlier in the day, Hamas announced it was ending a two-year truce with Israel.
“There is no truce with the Israeli occupation under the continuation of committing massacres against the Palestinian people without justification,” according to the statement from the Izzedine al Qassam Brigades, which was broadcast on a Hamas-run radio station. “We call for groups to join in calling against the crimes of the Israeli occupation.”
The article continues at CNN.com
Related: Israel Apologizes for Deaths of Egyptian Troops in Shootout With Militants, at FoxNews.com
…”Israel deeply regrets the deaths of the Egyptian officers,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement after Egypt threatened to recall its ambassador. The Egyptian government initially put an announcement on its website overnight saying it had pulled the envoy, but later backtracked and issued a new statement saying it was only considering the move.
The violence is testing Israel’s landmark 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, already strained by the fall of longtime autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.
The attacks have also raised concerns about the increasingly lawless northern Sinai, whose porous borders with both Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip make it an attractive staging ground for Palestinian militant attacks on Israel…
Also, The End of Obama’s Middle East Pipe Dream, at American Thinker:
…In two blood-soaked days, the Palestinians disabused Obama of any rational basis for believing that he still can be a Mideast peace-maker and earn his Nobel Peace Prize. It won’t happen on his watch — whether he ends up as a one-term or even two-term president.
