Israeli Airstrikes Hit Palestinian Ministry, School

Hundreds of people bury Ismail al-Masri, a member of the Palestinian National Forces who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. (By Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)

GAZA CITY, July 5 -- Israeli military aircraft destroyed the Palestinian Interior Ministry before dawn Wednesday, wounding at least seven people, hours after the military wing of the governing Hamas movement fired a rocket at the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon that landed in an empty school.

It was the second time in five days that Israel targeted the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, although the attack that rumbled across this city Wednesday was far larger. One wing of the multistory building collapsed entirely, and much of the rest sustained serious damage. Among the wounded were four children, hospital officials said, who were likely injured in homes near the ministry that were damaged in the attack.

An Israeli airstrike soon after hit the Dar al-Arqam School, a Hamas-funded institution here that Israeli warplanes also targeted last year. Israeli military officials said the Islamic school, part of Hamas's social-service network, provides charity to families of suicide bombers. A third strike hit what Israeli military officials described as a Hamas training camp in southern Gaza.

The series of bombings followed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's warning Tuesday evening that the rocket attack on Ashkelon, a port city north of Gaza, marked a "major escalation" in Israel's war with Hamas, whose military wing is one of the armed groups holding an Israeli soldier captured 10 days ago. The missile traveled as far as nine miles, the longest range recorded for one of the crude rockets used by the armed Palestinian groups here to target southern Israel. The Izzadine al-Qassam Brigades, as the Hamas military wing is known, issued a statement asserting responsibility for firing the rocket and promising "more surprises."

The exchange appeared to mark a dangerous new phase in the standoff over the captured 19-year-old soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and ratcheted up the pressure Israel has been applying to Hamas's government.

Although most Israel forces assembled on Gaza's border remained there Tuesday, Israel moved some tanks, armored-personnel carriers and troops into an industrial zone in northern Gaza hours after Shalit's captors ended their participation in diplomatic efforts to free him.

The push into the Erez industrial park, comprising roughly 15 tanks and other armored vehicles, was designed to root out explosives and tunnels along the strip's northern border. Shalit was captured June 25 when Palestinian gunmen emerged from a nearly half-mile tunnel under the border in southern Gaza and attacked his post.

Although there were no reports of casualties from sporadic Israeli small-arms fire, the incursion into Erez touched off feverish scavenging by hundreds of young Palestinian men, who carted off light fixtures, corrugated metal and even streetlights after Palestinian police left their posts. It was the third time since Shalit's capture that the Israeli military has sent a small armored force into Gaza, which Israel cleared of its settlements and bases last fall.

The industrial site's clothing and furniture factories once employed many Palestinians, whose handiwork was sold in Israel, but it has been mostly empty for months. The main passenger crossing between Israel and Gaza at Erez was closed for much of the day.

"I heard people saying that people are breaking into the industrial zone," said Ismail Haitham Mahdi, 24, who was carting off a door frame. "So I just came."

Israel's entry came hours after the expiration of an ultimatum issued a day earlier by the armed groups holding Shalit.

The groups, including the Hamas military wing, demanded that Israel's government release hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails by Tuesday morning or "bear full responsibility for the consequences." Olmert, who previously ruled out exchanging prisoners for Shalit's release, allowed the deadline to pass.