Sderot, a small city in the western Negev, was hit by a Kassam rocket shortly before noon today. No one was hurt. Over 15 Kassam rockets and mortar shells have been fired at Sderot in the past 18 months; in one incident, a baby and two children were hurt. In April of 2001, after the first shells hit Sderot, the IDF retaliated sharply with an air and ground forces attack on several Palestinian Authority targets in Gaza. Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer's office announced at the time that the Palestinian rockets were "intolerable," and that the IDF action was taken "in order to clarify to the Palestinians that the State of Israel will not accept this type of incident."