There was a dramatic upsurge in violence in the Middle East yesterday as Israeli helicopters and tanks fired missiles at Palestinian security targets in the Gaza Strip. This was after Palestinians had fired mortar shells at a town inside Israel proper.
And Israeli and Arab leaders exchanged fiery rhetoric in the wake of Israel's aerial assault early yesterday morning on a Syrian installation in Lebanon.
The Palestinians fired six mortars from Gaza into Israel yesterday afternoon, two of which landed in the town of Sderot. There were no injuries and no damage to property.
While the Palestinians have fired mortars in recent weeks at Israeli communities on the Gaza border, yesterday's attack was a marked escalation, in that Sderot is several kilometres from the Strip. Most of the mortar attacks have also been aimed at Jewish settlements in Gaza, and this was the deepest attack inside Israel so far.
The Israeli response was swift, with tanks firing shells at Palestinian security installations in Gaza. Towards the late evening, Israel launched a second strike, this time unleashing helicopter gunships which hit Palestinian security targets in the central Gaza town of Dir el-Balah. The Palestinians reported a total of four people injured.
Meanwhile, Israeli leaders almost across the political spectrum justified the decision by their Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon, to send his warplanes to bomb a Syrian radar station deep in Lebanon. Three Syrian soldiers were killed and six injured in the first Israeli attack on a Syrian target in Lebanon.
Israeli Defence Minister Mr Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said that since Israel had withdrawn its troops from Lebanon in May last year it had followed a "policy of restraint" in the face of cross-border attacks by Shi'ite Hizbollah guerrillas, but that "new rules of the game" now applied in Lebanon.
Israel said the aerial attack was in response to the killing of an Israeli soldier who died Saturday in a Hizbollah attack on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
After hours of official silence in Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Mr Farouk A-Shara, who was visiting Moscow, yesterday said Israel had committed a "grave error" and that it would "receive the appropriate response at the appropriate time".
The United States yesterday blamed Hizbollah guerrillas for the escalating violence.