JERUSALEM — An Israeli was injured by shrapnel after a Kassam rocket launched from Gaza landed in the courtyard of a Sderot home.
The attack occured Sunday, hours after Israel’s Air Force killed four Palestinian terrorists as they fired mortar shells into Israel.
The operation in Gaza City was in response to two Kassam rockets that fell near a kibbutz in southern Israel.
Hamas over the weekend also fired some 20 Kassam rockets and long-range Grad missiles at Sderot and Ashkelon.
Israel vowed to keep border crossings with the Gaza Strip closed as long as the attacks continue, despite pleas from the United Nations to allow food and other humanitarian aid into the area.
The attacks are a further breach of the shaky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which is set to end Dec. 19.
"The responsibility for breaking the calm and creating a situation of recurrent, continuing violence in the South lays entirely with Hamas and the other terrorist organizations active in the Gaza Strip," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at the start of Sunday’s Cabinet meeting.
Olmert said Israel has the right to prevent further terrorism and threats that are harming, first and foremost, the area’s residents.
"We have acted, and we will continue to act, by every proper means in order to prevent a situation in which this ‘calm’ from working against the security of the residents of Israel," he said.
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