Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday announced new strikes against the radical Islamist Hamas movement after another deadly missile attack on the Israeli border town of Sderot. Olmert said during Sunday’s cabinet meeting that nobody was immune against Israeli attacks. ‘We decide when, how and where we act without accepting any conditions from outside,’ he said.On Sunday morning, a 36-year-old Israeli was killed in a renewed rocket attack on Sderot, when a missile launched from the Gaza Strip hit his car in the town centre. Another Israeli was injured. The military arm of Hamas took responsibility for the attack. A total of four rockets hit the town. Already on Monday a woman had been killed in another rocket attack on Sderot.
The Israeli air force attacked other Hamas posts in Rafah and in the Jabalija refugee camp late on Saturday night, injuring two Palestinians. Earlier, Israeli airstrikes killed five members of the Hamas police militia in the Gaza Strip. Another 20 Palestinians suffered injuries in the attacks.
Israeli police had raised alert levels Saturday night to the highest possible non-emergency level, following a Saturday afternoon shooting attack on security forces by two Palestinian terrorists in East Jerusalem, the Israeli online news service ynet reported Sunday.
‘We know that there is a strong desire right now to carry out terror attacks and attempts to carry them out are actively taking place,’ head of the police operations department, commander Yoram Ohayon, was quoted as saying by ynet.
On Saturday afternoon, two armed Palestinians were killed when they opened fire on a police patrol on the West Bank border with East Jerusalem, injuring four officers. A third Palestinian, uninvolved in the attack, was killed in the crossfire. The Islamic Hamas movement had responded to fresh strikes against its forces in the Gaza Strip by saying that renewed attacks in Israel were only a matter of time.