September 12, 2007	Wednesday	Sha'aban 29, 1428

ZIKIM (Israel), Sept 11: Israel issued a warning to Gaza militants on Tuesday after a rocket smashed into an army base, wounding dozens of sleeping conscripts and heightening pressure on the government to hit the Hamas-run territory.

At least 69 soldiers sleeping in tents were wounded when the home-made rocket crashed at night into the Zikim base in southern Israel, not far from the border with Gaza, an army spokesman and medics said.

It was the bloodiest Palestinian rocket strike from Gaza in months and came before the start of the Jewish New Year, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s cabinet to take action to stop the fire.

The premier met senior ministers and military chiefs to decide on a response to the attack which Hamas — a group sworn to Israel’s destruction — said was an act of “legitimate resistance.”

“Those who carry out these types of attacks, as well as those who support them should know that they are not safe,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin told AFP.

No formal announcement was made after the meeting, but Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters that “we have not only military tools that we can use in the face of what’s happening in Gaza.” It appeared to be an allusion to earlier calls by ministers for Israel to cut electricity, fuel and water supplies into Gaza, measures that Olmert had rejected until now.

Many of the wounded troops were young conscripts due to complete their basic training on Tuesday. The vast majority of the troops received only light injuries, although one was wounded critically and four seriously, the army said.

The military wing of the radical Islamic Jihad — which is behind the majority of rocket firings into Israel — claimed the attack that it dubbed “The Dawn of Victory”. “The resistance is the only alternative to recover our rights and liberate our holy places,” senior Jihad official Abu Hamzeh told a press conference.

Hamas, which seized control of the territory nearly three months ago, after a week of bloody battles with the rival Fatah faction of President Mahmud Abbas, praised the strike.

Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said it was “legitimate resistance in the face of Israeli aggression and the legitimate defence in the face of Israeli crimes.” Hours after the attack, a Palestinian man and three of his children were wounded when an Israeli tank shell landed on their house in the northern Gaza city of Beit Hanun, medics said.

Militants in Gaza regularly fire rockets into Israel, but the projectiles — nicknamed Qassams after Hamas’s armed wing — are often inaccurate and most land in open spaces.

Twelve civilians have been killed by rocket attacks in Israel since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000. The last fatalities were in May, when two Israelis died in separate attacks.

“The time may be approaching where it will necessary to launch a major ground operation to stop the rocket fire,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned recently.

Israel has been unable to stamp out the rocket fire, despite launching regular strikes and incursions into the crowded and impoverished territory since it withdrew settlers and soldiers in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.

A major five-month Israeli operation launched inside Gaza last June after militants there seized an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid, killed hundreds of Palestinians but failed to bring the rocket attacks to an end.

In the wake of Tuesday’s strike, an Israeli minister called for the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference expected in November to be postponed.

—AFP