Barak shuts crossings after Kassam
Barak shuts crossings after Kassam
14 September 2008
published by www.jpost.com
Israel — Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to close all crossings to the Gaza Strip after a small bush fire broke out onSunday afternoon when a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza landed on the outskirts of a Sderot neighborhood.
No one was wounded in the attack.
In this latest truce violation, the rocket landed in aconstruction site, approximately 50 meters fromresidential buildings.
On August 25, two Kassam rockets landed in the western Negev, also prompting Barak to temporarily shut down the crossings into the Strip.
In another recent truce violation, terrorists detonated a bomb near IDF troops patrolling the southern Gaza border fence on Thursday. No one was wounded, but the fence was damaged.
Last Sunday, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin told the cabinet that the ‘calm’ in the Gaza Strip was, in relative terms, holding, some two and a half months since the cease-fire in Gaza went into effect.
According to Diskin, during the period of what has come to be know as the ‘calm,’ there have been some 36 terrorist acts – most of them Kassam or mortar attacks – from Gaza. This was in comparison to some 300 incidents registered in the month before the cease-fire, he said.
Diskin said it appeared Hamas was interested in preserving the cease-fire, although it was also trying to improve its position through arms smuggling from Egypt.