IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi made an effort Thursday afternoon to restore the confidence of Israel's citizens in the ability of its fighting forces to protect them from Gaza terrorists.
Ashkenazi assured participants at a ceremony marking the end of an IAF flight training course at the Hatzerim base that the army and the air force are "ready to carry out any activity needed to protect our home against all who engage in terror."
The State of Israel will not continue to tolerate a situation in which Hamas tries "to launch fear and terror at our citizens, women and children," he warned. "This reality cannot continue, and we must use all our power to strike at the infrastructure of terror, and create a new security reality around the Gaza Strip." The military will act, he said, "intelligently, deliberately and responsibly".
Gaza Terror Groups Continue Rocket, Mortar Strikes
While the chief of the IDF was reassuring his listeners that the army would protect Israel's citizens, however, Gaza terrorists continued their rocket and mortar attacks on the western Negev.
Thursday night, a Grad-type Katyusha rocket exploded on the southern edge of the port city of Ashkelon. There were no reports of injuries or damage. At least five other missiles were fired at the western Negev earlier in the day. No injuries were caused, but a fence in a Gaza-area community was damaged by one of the explosions.
Terrorists fired two mortar shells at an agricultural community in the Sha'ar HaNegev region at mid-afternoon. No one was injured and no property damage was reported in the attack. A volley of mortar shells that followed, however, fell short of the mark and exploded in an area under Palestinian Authority rule, near the Kissufim Junction. There were no reports of injuries or damage.
At least one Kassam rocket landed in the Gaza Belt community of Kfar Aza in the late afternoon, and another exploded in an open area near Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.