Israeli strikes kill 9 after rocket attack from Gaza

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday fired a Katyusha rocket 10 1/2 miles into Israel, their deepest artillery strike yet, provoking some of the heaviest Israeli assaults in months. Nine Palestinians were killed in the day’s fighting.

The rocket landed harmlessly on the northern outskirts of the coastal city of Ashkelon. An Israeli tank and helicopter offensive that was already underway in Gaza quickly intensified, targeting suspected arms depots and homes and hide-outs of militants, who fired back with grenade launchers and automatic rifles.

Palestinian medical workers said three of those killed were civilians -- the mother, sister and brother of a militant from the Islamic Jihad group, who also died when a tank shell ripped through their home in the city of Khan Yunis. Israel said it was responding to gunfire from the house.

More than 30 Palestinians, including five children, were reported wounded as the fighting spread from Khan Yunis to Gaza City and Rafah.

A Palestinian Authority spokesman, Nabil abu Rudaineh, called the Israeli offensive “a bloody message” that could tarnish President Bush’s visit to the region next week. Bush is coming to measure progress in peace talks that he launched between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in November at a conference in Annapolis, Md.

“They are killing the spirit of Annapolis,” Abu Rudaineh said.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the army operations were defensive, aimed at stopping frequent rocket fire from Gaza. The coastal strip is ruled by the Islamic militant movement Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction and is not involved in the peace talks.

Until recent weeks, all the rockets fired from Gaza were homemade Kassams, wildly inaccurate and incapable of reaching beyond the Israeli border town of Sderot, which has a population of about 20,000. Kassams and mortar strikes from Gaza have killed 12 Israelis in the last six years.

Israeli officials said the recent introduction of imported, more powerful Katyushas into the Palestinian arsenal marked an escalation of the conflict.

Thursday’s Katyusha strike was among the first launched from Gaza and, Regev said, the deepest into Israel. The 122- millimeter rockets carry warheads of up to 66 pounds and have a 19-mile range, putting 250,000 residents of southern Israel in the firing line, he said.

The Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah rained thousands of Katyusha rockets on northern Israel, including cities, during the 2006 war in Lebanon. Israeli officials said those rockets had been sent by Iran through Syria and that the ones reaching Gaza, on the other hand, were passing through Egypt’s border with the territory.

“If that porous border remains porous, we will soon see a new strategic reality, a situation that for Israel is unsustainable,” Regev said, repeating Israeli criticism that Egypt is doing little to stop Palestinian weapons smuggling.

Palestinian militant groups rushed to portray the Katyusha strike as their own.

Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility in a joint statement that promised deeper strikes into Israel. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command issued a rival claim and a videotape purporting to show the rocket launch.

The Israeli offensive targeted those groups as well as the armed wing of Hamas. One of the dead was a former intelligence official of the Fatah movement, Hamas’ rival, who had fled Gaza during fighting with Hamas forces last summer and returned Wednesday, only to be arrested. He was killed by an airstrike on a Hamas police facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, visiting Jordan on Thursday, briefed King Abdullah II on the Gaza operations. An official Jordanian statement said Abdullah lectured Olmert on Israel’s plans to expand Jewish neighborhoods and settlements in territory claimed by Palestinians, saying they violated understandings reached in Annapolis.

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Special correspondent Abu Alouf reported from Gaza City and Times staff writer Boudreaux from Jerusalem.