At least 17 people - 7 Israelis, 6 Palestinians, and at least four Palestinian gunmen - were killed Thursday, in one of the most violent days for months in Israel and the Gaza Strip, as militants shot up Israeli vehicles, and Israeli aircraft bombed the Gaza Strip in response.
Six of the Israeli dead were civilians and one was a member of the security forces. Two of the dead were women. The Palestinian casualties from the Israeli air strikes included a senior member of the radical Popular Resistance Committees. The shooting attacks, which occurred in southern Israel, near the Egyptian border and about 20 kilometres north of the Red Sea port city of Eilat, left 31 Israeli injured, some of them seriously.
A senior Israeli army officer said intelligence information indicated that the perpetrators of the attacks in Israel came from the Gaza Strip. But Israeli officials could not say with certainty that the gunmen had infiltrated Israel via the porous border with the Sinai peninsula.
And despite claims by witnesses, Israeli military officials said there was no information that Egyptian forces stationed across the nearby border had been involved in any of the attacks. The Egyptian governor of south Sinai, Chalid Foea, said "no extremists" had crossed from Sinai into Israel, and no one had fired over the border toward the Jewish state.
Nonetheless, the attacks highlighted Israeli fears that in wake of the Egyptian revolution and the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, security along the Israel-Sinai border would be weakened. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak gave expression to these assessments, saying in a statement that the assaults "demonstrate the weakening of Egypt's control over the Sinai peninsula and the expansion of terrorist activity there."
Hinting at a fierce Israeli retaliation, Barak said the attacks originated in the Gaza Strip, and "we will act with full force and determination." No Palestinian groups claimed responsibility for the attacks. Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, said he "did not" think the Islamist group was behind the attacks, which he praised. The violence began at around noon local time (0900 GMT) when gunmen shot up two buses and two private vehicles.
Shortly afterward, an explosive device was detonated against an Israeli military patrol rushing to the scene. The gunmen fled, pursued by the Israeli soldiers and police, and were cornered, sparking a lengthy shootout, in which four were killed and three wounded. The dead were wearing explosive belts or clutching grenades, which had to be defused by sappers before the bodies could be moved.
It was unclear whether the three gunmen who were wounded in the shootout were taken into custody, but hours after the incidents, more shooting broke out in the area, in which one person was said to be seriously wounded. It was also unclear how many of the gunmen who carried out the attacks were still at large. Hours after the shooting attacks, Israeli aircraft bombed the Gaza Strip, killing 6 people. The United States and Germany condemned today's attack, which US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called "brutal and cowardly." "This violence only underscores our strong concerns about the security situation in the Sinai Peninsula," she said.