Israeli government resists call to attack after rocket strike

JERUSALEM - The Israeli government resisted calls yesterday from hawkish lawmakers and angry citizens to begin a broad assault on the Gaza Strip after a predawn rocket strike on an army training base wounded 69 soldiers on their last day of boot camp.

The single rocket struck an unoccupied tent at the Zikim base, less than 2 miles north of Gaza, near a cluster of other tents in which recruits slept. One soldier was hospitalized in critical condition and nine others had moderate to serious injuries. Most of the soldiers sustained light injuries and wounds from shrapnel.

The number of injuries was high for an attack involving the rocket known generically as a Qassam, a highly inaccurate weapon cut from lampposts and other tubing that usually carries only a small amount of explosive material in its warhead. Palestinian gunmen compensate by firing the rockets with frequency; more than 100 were launched last month.

In a statement sent to news agencies in Gaza, the extremist Islamic Jihad group asserted responsibility for the attack, which the armed movement called "Operation Victory at Dawn." The armed wing of the smaller Popular Resistance Committees was named as a partner.

"We will continue the resistance, whether people like it or not," the statement read. "We're not frightened by the threats to invade Gaza. We will continue to react against Israeli crimes."

Thousands of the crude rockets, which have a range of several miles, have been shot into Israel since 2000, when the Palestinian uprising began; Israeli air strikes, intensive artillery shelling, and incursions by ground troops have brought only brief lulls. The Hamas administration that has run Gaza since June has done little to rein in the fighters who launch the rockets.

In a statement posted on a Hamas website, Sami Abu Zouhri, a spokesman for the armed Islamic movement, said yesterday that "we continue to emphasize the continuation of the project of resistance and the right of all of the armed branches to defend the Palestinian people."

"These rockets are facing the continuing Zionist aggression," Zouhri said. "The problem is with the occupation."

After a rocket landed near a day-care center in the Israeli city of Sderot last week, some Israeli Cabinet ministers called for the government to suspend delivery of electricity, water, and fuel to Gaza's 1.4 million residents.

Some officials renewed that threat in the angry aftermath of yesterday's strike. But the only military response occurred a few hours after the attack when Israeli aircraft fired on rocket launch sites in Beit Lahiya. Four Palestinian children were injured in that strike, health officials in Gaza said.