Israel braces for rockets on Ashkelon, Beersheba

From JPost, May. 21, 2007 , by YAAKOV KATZ AND REBECCA ANNA STOIL [...AP contributed to the report]....

...a 35-year-old woman was killed in Sderot when a salvo of rockets pounded the western Negev and one hit her car.

Shortly after 8 p.m., five rockets were fired from Gaza and one struck the woman's car near Sderot's commercial center. She died en route to hospital, becoming the first Israeli to die in a rocket attack since November. Two other people were wounded in the attack, one moderately and the other lightly, and were evacuated to Ashkelon's Barzilai Hospital.

Earlier in the day, an IAF missile hit a car in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, killing its four occupants, an Islamic Jihad Kassam squad. Another strike killed a Hamas operative and leveled a suspected weapons warehouse.

The IDF said the Islamic Jihad members were responsible for dozens of Kassam attacks, including one in November that killed Fatima Slutsker, 57, in Sderot and seriously wounded one of Defense Minister Amir Peretz's bodyguards. The IDF said the squad was intercepted based on intelligence provided by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

In response, Hamas ...threatened to renew suicide attacks from the West Bank.
Tens of thousands of people on Monday attended a funeral in Gaza City for the people killed in Sunday evening's IAF air strike.

.....The latest air strikes followed Sunday's security cabinet decision to step up operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad and to begin targeted killings of terrorist leaders and politicians.

.....Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Monday said Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal was a legitimate target. Senior defense officials said Mashaal was aware that he was a target for Israel and had refrained from visiting the Gaza Strip.

...Other Hamas leaders reportedly being targeted by Israel include Muhammad Deif, commander of Izzadin Kassam (Hamas's military wing) and a master bomb maker; Ahmad Jaberi, an Izzadin Kassam commander in the Gaza Strip; and Khaled Manzour, head of Islamic Jihad's military wing.....