[Globe and Mail-Canada] Patrick Martin - Thirteen days of bombardment, six days of an Israeli ground assault, and still Hamas, or its cronies, are firing rockets out of Gaza. There are fewer of them to be sure, but they're still coming and Israelis still are running for cover. "They had a lot of rockets hidden away," says Mark Heller, principal research associate of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. "And the IDF still hasn't gone into the heavily populated areas where they hid them." Israel's drive into northern Gaza pushed back those militants who had used the area to fire short-range, Kassam rockets on Sderot and nearby communities. The inability of the Kassams to reach these targets from deeper inside Gaza is a big reason for the drop in the number of rockets fired each day. But the foreign-made Grad-type of Katyusha rocket can still reach major targets inside Israel even when launched from deep inside the biggest communities in Gaza. Israeli forces haven't reached the inland missiles.
2009-01-09 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive