40 rockets hit Israeli city in one day
Friday, February 29, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
TEL AVIV — Hamas gunners in Gaza are targeting an Israeli city with rocket salvos of increasing magnitude.
Palestinian gunners have for months been aiming their Kassam-class missiles and BM-21 Grad rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon. But Thursday, more than 40 Kassams and Grads, a variant of the Russian-origin Katyusha rocket, landed in the city of 110,000.
"We must prepare for continued escalation," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
Officials said the Palestinian strikes reflected enhanced missile and rocket capability by the Hamas regime. They said the regime has received scores of Grad rockets and components in January 2008 in wake of the Hamas bombing of the 12-kilometer Gaza-Sinai border wall.
Hamas has been expanding the range of its indigenous missiles and rockets to that of the BM-21. Officials said that by the end of 2008, Hamas would be able to produce weapons with a range of 20 kilometers. Ashkelon is located nine kilometers from the northern edge of the Gaza Strip.
"Hamas is a strategic threat when it gets rockets as a gift from the Iranians," Amos Gilead, the head of the Defense Ministry's political-military division, said.
The Grad 122 mm rockets were said to have been a variant of an Iranian weapon deployed by Hizbullah in the 2006 war against Israel. Officials said the rockets enabled Hamas to target everything from homes to strategic facilities in Ashkelon.
Hamas, which receives at least $10 million a year from Iran, has overcome technical obstacles that enables the regime to increase production and store missiles for months at a time. Hamas was said to be capable of producing up to 100 Kassams per day and has an inventory of nearly 1,000 rockets and missiles.
"We are doing our best to upgrade our capabilities," Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said. "We will never have equipment comparable to our enemy, but we are working all the time to have enough to make any aggression a regrettable adventure for the enemy."
On Thursday, Barak ordered the activation of the missile alert system in Ashkelon. Officials said the decision reflected a government assessment that Hamas would focus its strikes on Ashkelon rather than limiting attacks to Sderot, located about three kilometers from the Gaza Strip.
"Israel has to make a strategic decision," Tsahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said.