GAZA STRIP, Southern Israel ― The Israel Air Force launched a massive attack on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip this afternoon to retaliate for Qassam missile attacks on Israeli cities near Gaza such as Sderot, Netivot, Ashkelon and others. Palestinians said more than 200 people were killed in the attacks, called Operation Cast Lead, and that hundreds more were injured. Many buildings were destroyed, including laboratories used to make missiles, warehouses to store weapons, police stations and more.
Gaza Under Fire
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel tried hard to avoid a military operation in Gaza, but that daily Qassam rocket attacks on Israel have made life terrible for residents of Sderot, Ashkelon and other cities near the Gaza Strip border.
“Israel did everything in its power to… enable normal life for its citizens in the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip,” he said. ”The quiet that we offered was met with shelling.”
Olmert also said that Hamas is responsible for the current violence.
“No country would be willing to accept the current reality (of rocket attacks). It is clear that Hamas is bent on conflict. In such a situation we had no alternative but to respond. We do not rejoice in battle but neither will we be deterred from it,” he said.
100 bombs dropped
The operation began at 11:30 am. More than 80 warplanes and helicopters took part in the assault, dropping more than 100 bombs. At one target in Gaza City, Palestinian police were holding a graduation ceremony for new officers.
After the attack began, Palestinian terrorists fired several dozen Qassam and Grad rockets at Israel. One man, 58-year-old Beber Vaknin, was killed when a missile hit his home in the city of Netivot. Other bombs landed in Sderot and Ashkelon, and gunmen shot at workers in the fields at Kibbutz Nir Am, next to the Israel-Gaza border.
7 years of Qassams
Since the al-Aqsa Intifada began in September, 2000 Palestinians have fired more than 10,000 Qassam Rockets at Israel. Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June, 2007, there have been ___ rocket attacks.
In June, 2008 Israel and Hamas signed a tahadiya, or temporary cease-fire agreement, that was meant to last six months. There were no attacks for more than four months, but Qassams started falling again in Israel in early November after the Israeli army moved to prevent Hamas members from kidnapping an IDF soldier. Four Hamas members were killed in that operation. 329 Qassams and mortars at Israel during the tahadiya period.
On December 19, Hamas officially declared the truce over, and three rockets fired from northern Gaza landed in open fields in southern Israel. Also, Palestinians tried to shoot farmers working in kibbutz fields near the Gaza border. That weekend, more than 40 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip and 20 rockets landed in Israel on December 21. One house was damaged in the attacks, and a foreign worker on a kibbutz was lightly injured from shrapnel from a mortar bomb.
