A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded Monday next to a day-care center in the Israeli border town of Sderot, an attack that Palestinian militants called retribution for the deaths of three Gaza children in an Israeli air strike last week.
None of the 15 children at the center was injured. But frantic parents, angry over the government’s inability to protect Sderot from near-daily rocket fire, pulled the town’s 2,500 schoolchildren out of classes and vowed to keep them home until the classrooms are fortified or the students are transferred.
Signaling an escalation of the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the army was instructed to “destroy every rocket launcher and to strike all those involved in the fire.”
“We will not limit ourselves,” he said at a news conference.
Israel carries out frequent ground and air attacks against Gaza-based militants who have launched thousands of homemade Qassam rockets across the border since 2001. But it has been unable to stop the rockets, which have killed at least 12 Israelis in the past six years, or fully protect the 22,000 people of Sderot, the only sizable Israeli community within the primitive weapon’s 6-mile range.
The army said seven rockets, some fired from as close as a mile away, fell in or near Sderot on Monday. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the barrage, calling it “a gift to the Israelis for the new school year” and retaliation for “crimes against Palestinian children.”
Three Palestinian cousins, ages 10 to 12, were killed Wednesday in an air strike on one of Islamic Jihad’s rocket launch sites near the border. The Israeli army first said it fired at three figures thought to be retrieving a launcher and realized too late that they were children. After an inquiry, the army said the cousins had been playing tag.
Sunday was the first day of Israel’s academic year. Anticipating that Sderot would be targeted, the army dispatched more than 200 soldiers to escort students and instruct them on emergency procedures.
Sderot has an alarm system to warn of approaching rockets, and residents often have less than 20 seconds to reach one of the town’s concrete shelters. On Monday, just 12 seconds elapsed between the alarm and the rocket’s explosion in a courtyard adjacent to the unprotected day-care center, according to film aired on Israel’s Channel 10 news.
The building sustained no structural damage. News footage showed toddlers screaming in playpens or crawling hurriedly across the floor, some with pacifiers in their mouths.
“The children were helpless; the caretakers were hysterical,” Avi Teiger, a paramedic, told Israel Radio, describing the scene before soldiers and terrified parents arrived to whisk the toddlers away.
“The school year is over,” said Batya Katar, head of the Sderot Parents Association. “We cannot hold on anymore.”
In May, the parents group won a Supreme Court decision requiring the government to reinforce all classrooms with concrete or steel-plated walls and roof coverings by summer’s end.
After Monday’s attack, leaders of the parents group said they would insist on keeping the schools shut until the government complied with the court’s ruling.
Olmert’s hawkish critics demanded that Israel launch a wider ground offensive in Gaza, a territory from which the army withdrew its bases two years ago and has been reluctant to reoccupy.
“The problem is not fortifications; it’s terror,” Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal told Israel Radio. “For seven years the state hasn’t dealt with terror. So we fortify all the schools. What about the other places? Are we safe in our cars? In the streets? The cafes? The playgrounds?”
