Israeli air attacks on Gaza, Hamas rocket strikes raise cross-border death tolls

Hamas Grad rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, striking the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, the capital of Negev, Israeli emergency services said. Meanwhile, the armed wing of Hamas said it fired Grad rockets on Saturday at the Israeli town of Ofakim, some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Gaza Strip, where officials earlier reported two children had been lightly wounded.

"We fired four Grad rockets at the Zionist town of Ofakim,” said a statement from the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas.

Eli Bein, a spokesman for Magen David Paramedic services, said an Israeli man had died in hospital of injuries suffered in the rocket strike in Beersheba.

Paramedics and police said that at least two more people were wounded seriously in the same Grad attack.

"This is our response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation after the deaths of 15 of our martyrs and dozens of injured" in Gaza, the statement from the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades read.

Israeli planes had attacked Gaza earlier, killing 15 people, among them gunmen and five civilians including three children; attacks stemming from a deadly assault along the Jewish state’s border which killed eight Israelis on Thursday.

The Hamas rocket attack had also injured three Palestinian men from the occupied West Bank as they hid in a sand dune outside the Israeli city of Ashdod, a police spokeswoman said.

"One rocket hit a house, causing damage but no casualties," police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP.

"The second fell on open ground, among sand dunes, where it wounded three people, Palestinians staying in Israel illegally, injuring two seriously and one moderately," she said of an attack near Ashdod.

Reporters on the scene have said the steady rocket fire has disrupted life in much of southern Israel, with many sheltering "in safe rooms made of reinforced concrete when the frequent air raid sirens blare," Reuters reported.

More than 50 rockets and mortars had been fired at Israel during the day and 75 since the initial attacks on Thursday, a military spokesman said.

Militant group Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) claimed responsibility for the deadly rocket strike at a house in the southern city of Beersheba, while Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for another attack that destroyed a home in the town of Ofakim, Reuters reported.

This was the first time in months that Hamas claimed responsibility over rocket attacks against Israel, after largely observing a de facto truce since the end of a three-week offensive in January 2009.

Israel has said the PRC was responsible for Thursday's gun ambush on the Egyptian border, in which attackers ambushed two buses, detonated a bomb under a military jeep, and fired an RPG at a civilian car early leaving eight Israelis dead and about a dozen more wounded. But the PRC denied involvement. 

In an immediate backlash, the Israeli air raids had killed six people in the southern city of Rafah on the Egyptian border late Thursday, including the head of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) militant group, Palestinian medical sources said.

Since them, the now three-day spasm of cross-border violence has claimed the lives of more than 30 people.

Israeli leaders held consultations about a possible response to the Gaza rockets, Reuters reported. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement blaming the Palestinian self-rule government in the occupied West Bank for Thursday's violence.

The Palestinian leadership "bears full responsibility for the murderous terror attacks against Israelis who were on vacation," he said.

"The events of the past days prove that Palestinian talk of abandoning the path of terror and moving to diplomacy is as far from reality as the distance between Ramallah and the UN headquarters in New York."

Meanwhile, Hamas had said on Friday it would "not allow the enemy to escalate its aggression without getting punished."

Amid the conflict, five Egyptian security personnel were also killed during Israeli aerial attacks, sparking a crisis in Israeli-Egyptian ties with Cairo. Israel has apologized to neighboring Egypt over the deaths, while Egypt called on Israel to halt the attacks on Gaza.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said Egypt was "following with deep concern the escalation by the Israeli army against the Gaza Strip, in which innocent civilian casualties had fallen," and further urged Israel to stop its operations.

The Cairo-based Arab League said it would hold an urgent meeting on Sunday to discuss Israeli air strikes on Gaza that killed the 15 Palestinians, while international fears of further cross-border conflict have been voiced by the Quartet (the EU, Russia, the UN and the United States). 

"The Quartet remains concerned about the unsustainable situation in Gaza as well as the risk of escalation, and calls for restraint from all sides," read a statement by the group, tasked with resuscitating peace talks.