Gaza Rocket Attack Kills an Israeli

Officials Threaten Severe Reprisals Against Palestinian Fighters

JERUSALEM, May 21 -- Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip killed a 32-year-old Israeli woman Monday night and seriously wounded another civilian in the city of Sderot, prompting Israeli officials to threaten severe reprisals. It was the first Israeli fatality of the most recent surge in violence.

Hours earlier, the Israeli air force fired on a car in Gaza carrying gunmen from Islamic Jihad, one of the armed Palestinian groups behind a week-long rocket barrage into southern Israel. The strike killed four gunmen and brought calls for attacks against the Jewish state.

The woman, identified as Shirel Friedman, was the 9th Israeli to be killed by the crude rockets, known as Qassams, since hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians began to flare in the fall of 2000. The military wing of Hamas, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, asserted responsibility for the attack.

The last previous deadly strike occurred in November, when Yaakov Yaakobov, 43, also of Sderot, was killed.

"I can tell you that no nation would tolerate such terror," said David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman who visited the scene of the fatal strike on Monday. "Israel certainly won't. We will put an end to these rocket attacks, and we will do so with determination."

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 160 rockets from Gaza into Israel over the past week, Israeli military officials said, including 13 on Monday.

Before the fatal attack, two Israelis had been seriously wounded in the barrage and dozens of others were treated for light injuries and shock. Israeli airstrikes have killed about 40 Palestinians, most of them Hamas gunmen, over that time.

Earlier Monday, Israeli officials warned that Hamas's political leadership could be targeted for assassination unless the rocket fire stopped.

But many from Hamas, an armed, radical Islamic movement that denies Israel's right to exist, said its military wing would strike back in response to an Israeli air attack the previous evening that hit the Gaza home of a senior party lawmaker.

Khalil al-Haya, head of Hamas's parliamentary bloc, was not at home at the time, and Israeli military officials said he was not the intended target. But eight people were killed, including seven members of Haya's family.

"Hamas will escalate against the Israelis," said Osama al-Muzaini, a senior Hamas official in Gaza. "Nothing will be forbidden after they have killed our women and children and elderly."

Asked whether Hamas, which won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006, would resume suicide bombings inside Israel, Muzaini said: "Our fighters have orders to do any operation they can. It's only a matter of time."

Special correspondent Islam Abdulkareem in Gaza contributed to this report.