Missile from Gaza hits Israeli school bus; 2 hurt

An anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip struck a school bus in southern Israel Thursday, wounding two people, including one child critically, Israeli officials said.

Israeli tanks quickly retaliated by opening fire across the border, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding seven other people, Palestinian medics said.

The sudden outbreak of violence illustrated the fragile situation along the Israel-Gaza border, where small bouts of violence can quickly escalate into heavy-scale warfare.

After a two-year lull, tensions have been rising between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza over the past few weeks. From Israel's perspective, Thursday's attack was the most serious of this period.



Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the army to respond quickly and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Israeli medical services said the bus was nearly empty after dropping off school children and was carrying only the driver and a lone passenger at the time of the attack. Paramedics were trying to resuscitate a 16-year-old boy with a serious head wound at the scene. The driver was moderately wounded.

TV footage showed a yellow bus with its windows blown out and its rear charred. Police said it was struck by an anti-tank missile.

Palestinian officials reported tank fire toward Gaza shortly after the missile attack. The Israeli fire killed a 50-year-old man and wounded seven people, said Palestinian health official Adham Abu Salmiya.

Israel usually responds with tough reprisals to Palestinian attacks. It also launched an airstrike on a Hamas training facility in northern Gaza.

Later Thursday, Israeli aircraft and tanks attacked Hamas facilities in the central Gaza Strip. A tank shell also struck a fuel depot in northern Gaza, sending a plume of smoke above the area. No casualties were reported.

The missile attack came hours after Israel carried out airstrikes against tunnels it says are used by militants to smuggle weapons under the Egyptian border and carry out attacks.

Hamas and other Gaza militants have fired thousands of projectiles toward southern Israel in previous years. Israel launched a massive offensive in late 2008 to counter the near-daily barrage.

Israel recently deployed its first system to defend its tanks from anti-tank missiles. As a result, Gaza militants may be turning the weapons on new targets, since the attack on the bus appears to be the first time such a missile has been fired at a civilian Israeli target.

Police said that within an hour of the initial missile attack about 15 mortar shells fired from Gaza landed in Israel, including one that directly struck a home, causing damage but no injuries.

In a separate incident, Israel said it had arrested five Hamas militants in east Jerusalem and charged them in a pipe bomb attack that wounded a sanitation worker last month.

In the West Bank, Israeli troops rounded up dozens of Palestinian women overnight Thursday in a massive sweep as part of a search for the killer of five Israelis in a nearby settlement last month.

Residents in Awarta said that between 100 and 200 women were taken into custody and that Israeli troops took their fingerprints and DNA samples from them. By midafternoon, all the women were believed to have been released.

Israel has been carrying out arrests in Awarta since a young Israeli couple and three of their children were stabbed to death as they slept in their home in the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar.

Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said Israel's mass roundup of women was unheard of. She said some 500 men from the village have also been arrested since the stabbing.

It was not known how many remain in custody. Israeli authorities have imposed a gag order on their investigation and had no comment.