At least 21 Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip struck the western Negev on Saturday, lightly hurting five people.
Several rockets damaged buildings in Israeli towns, including a home that was hit while family members were inside. None of them were injured. Another rocket fired from Gaza shattered the windows of a Sderot synagogue.
One rocket caused damage to a building near Sapir College, another landed near a Sderot yeshiva, and a third hit a water pipe in a nearby farm. The other rockets landed in open areas, with one setting a Sderot field ablaze.
Advertisement
Earlier, Hamas and Gaza health officials said five of the group's members were killed and four others were wounded in two seperate Israel Air Force strikes on police stations in southern Gaza late Friday.
An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said the strikes were in response to a mortar attack Friday by Hamas militants that killed Jimmy Kdoshim, a 48-year-old Israeli civilian, as he was tending the garden of his home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
A Magen David Adom rescue crew which was summoned to the scene pronounced Kdoshim dead following unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate him.
Alon Schuster, the head of the Sha'ar Hanegev regional council said on Saturday that the government needed to choose between outright war or diplomacy to stop the Qassams. "The events of the last several days, which peaked with the tragic death of a member of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, place a unequivocal objective before the government: wiping out the offensive on the Gaza border towns, whether by war or by discussions."
Also on Saturday, in the northern West Bank town of Jaba, Palestinian youths hurled rocks and firebombs at IDF jeeps. Residents said soldiers responded by firing live rounds and rubber-coated steel pellets, wounding nine Palestinians.
Hamas said the attack on the Gaza town of Rafah targeted a Hamas police station, killing two of its members and wounding four. The other IAF strike killed three Hamas men in the Gaza town of Khan Yunis. Hamas said the casualties were all members of the group's police force.
The IDF spokesperson also confirmed an additional strike early Saturday morning, in which the IAF attacked a group of gunmen near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip. They confirmed the group was hit, but there was no word yet on casualties.
The radio of Gaza's ruling Hamas movement said the group was responsible for Friday's mortar fire.
"Hamas is clearly in control of the Gaza Strip and responsible for all hostile fire into Israel. We hold it accountable for today's attack and the murder of our civilians," David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said Friday.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' military wing, said militants had targeted a military position.
Asked if the deadly attack wouldn't make it more difficult to conclude a
truce, he replied, "We will continue to fire until the last moment before a truce is completed."
In related news, the mayor of a southern Gaza village said IDF troops had fired flares at farmlands, setting ablaze several acres of wheat and cucmbers.
The IDF said it would look into the report from the village of Khouza. Militants frequently use the area to fire rockets and mortars at southern Israel.
