ISRAEL: Two Israelis wounded in rocket attack in the city of Ashdod

Record ID: 352513

  • Title: ISRAEL: Two Israelis wounded in rocket attack in the city of Ashdod
  • Date: 30th December 2008
  • Summary: NAHAL OZ, ISRAEL (DECEMBER 29, 2008) (REUTERS) WIDE VIEW OF NAHAL OZ BORDER AREA SOLDIERS WALKING AMBULANCE DRIVING AWAY FROM BORDER AREA ANOTHER AMBULANCE DRIVING AWAY VARIOUS OF SOLDIERS NEAR CLOSED MILITARY BORDER AREA WIDE VIEW OF BORDER AREA
  • Embargoed: 14th January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA9IQIOT6BGCEE2BUT474EWSN3W
  • Story Text: Two Israelis killed in long range rocket attack form the Gaza Strip on the city of Ashdod.
    Rockets fired from Gaza by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad after nightfall on Monday (December 29), killed two Israelis, increasing pressure on the government as the army amassed infantry and armoured forces along the border.
    Earlier on Monday, another Israeli was killed in a construction site, thus putting the Israeli deathtoll on Monday to three.
    In the latest rocket attacks from Gaza, one Israeli was killed in a rocket attack in the Nahal Oz area. Another Israeli woman died after a long range missile struck a bus station in the city of Ashdod.
    A total of four Israelis have been killed by rockets since the offensive began on Saturday (December 27).
    Israeli minister for trade and industry and deputy prime minister Eli Yishai who visited the site of the Ashdod attack, had to kneel on the ground in the middle of a live interview with CH10 television, after another missile alarm was heard.
    Israel on Monday expanded its fiercest offensive in the Gaza Strip in decades, flattening a Hamas ministry and readying for a possible ground operation after militants fired deadly cross-border rocket salvoes.
    The Palestinian toll from the onslaught rose to 335 dead and 800 wounded, medical officials in Gaza said. A United Nations agency said at least 62 of the dead were civilians.

    "We have an all-out war against Hamas and its kind," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told parliament, using a term he has employed in the past to describe a long-term struggle against Israel's Islamist enemies.
    Broadening their targets to include the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes bombed the Interior Ministry, which supervises 13,000 members of the group's security forces. The building had been evacuated and there were no casualties.
    The planes also attacked the homes of two top commanders in Hamas's armed wing. They were not home, but several family members were among the seven dead.
    Hamas, an Islamist movement that took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, defied the Israeli assaults, the fiercest in the coastal territory since the 1967 Middle East war.
    Rocket fire from Gaza at Israel intensified immediately after Hamas declared the end of a truce on Dec. 19.
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