by Hillel Fendel(IsraelNN.com) Arabs fired two Kassam rockets at the Negev city of Sderot Sunday afternoon, and a woman sustained shrapnel wounds. The Israel Air Force responded quickly by firing at the rocket launchers. Palestinian Authority sources reported that two Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed in the retaliation.
The rockets were fired shortly after 4:30 PM. One Kassam landed in the Sapir College campus in Sderot, where Magen David Adom medics treated the woman whose hand was jabbed by shrapnel. She was later evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon. A second rocket landed in a field just outside the city.
The two dead terrorists brought the day's total to four, after IDF troops fired on and killed two armed would-be infiltrators in northern Gaza.
The issue of reinforcing schools in Sderot against rockets continues to be a matter of controversy. The Supreme Court refused last week a government request to discuss the issue again, and therefore its directive remains in effect to have the school buildings reinforced by the time the school year begins. Parents say they won't send their children to school on September 1 if the buildings are not satisfactorily protected by then - which they are not expected to be.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded angrily to the Court decision, saying that it was the government's prerogative to decide where and to what extent to provide reinforcement. "We must not reinforce ourselves to death," he told the Cabinet.
Rockets have hit Sderot schools more than once. In May 2006, a Kassam hit a classroom that was empty only because the students had been delayed on their way there by a slightly longer-than-average morning speech. The teacher and students were very emotional when they saw the damage, seeing that the rocket had crashed precisely where they normally would have been sitting.