JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – Gunmen killed seven people in southern Israel on Thursday in attacks along the Egyptian border and Israel responded with an air strike in the Gaza Strip that killed six Palestinians, including the leaders of a group it blamed for the violence.
The series of assaults on a desert road north of Israel’s Red Sea resort of Eilat drew Israeli accusations that Egypt’s new rulers were losing their grip on the porous frontier.
Israel said the attackers infiltrated from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip via Egypt’s Sinai desert, despite stepped up efforts by Egyptian security forces in recent days to rein in Palestinian and Islamist radicals.
“This was a grave incident in which Israelis and Israeli sovereignty were harmed. Israel will respond accordingly,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. He was due to speak further on the most deadly attack in Israel since 2008 in a televised address later in the day.
Israeli military commanders said six civilians and one soldier were killed in attacks on two buses, a car and an army vehicle. Another 25 people were wounded.
The violence, which began in the early afternoon, stretched into the evening. As the Israeli military’s chief of staff and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were briefing reporters at the scene, ambulances raced away to what reporters said was another attack by gunmen in which one person was wounded.
The military said up to four gunmen were killed in southern Israel, including two who blew themselves up in suicide attacks on one of the buses and in a confrontation with soldiers.
Egyptian soldiers apparently shot dead two other gunmen, the military said.
Hours later, Israel struck against the Popular Resistance Committees, an armed faction that often operates independently of Gaza’s Hamas rulers. The Israeli military said the PRC was behind the border attack.
The PRC said its commander, Kamal al-Nairab, his deputy, Immad Hammad, and three other members of the group were killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Local Palestinians said a nine-year-old boy, the son of the owner of the house, was also killed.
Earlier, in an interview with Israel Radio, bus driver Benny Bilbaski said he had seen two men in fatigues shooting at his vehicle.
“I saw that there were wounded on the bus but I continued to drive on, looking straight not looking right or left. Once I got a kilometer past the area and I was out of range we took care of the wounded,” he said.
Barak said the incident “reflects the weakening of Egypt’s hold in the Sinai and the broadening of activities by terror elements.”
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said Israel “has specific and precise information that these terrorists who targeted Israelis today came out of the Gaza Strip.”
HAMAS DENIES RESPONSIBILITY
A senior Israeli official said the gunmen, unable to cross into Israel through the heavily patrolled border with the Gaza Strip, had gone into the Sinai and then infiltrated from there into southern Israel.
Hamas in Gaza denied responsibility and said it would fight back if it came under Israeli attack. “We will not stand handcuffed and we will spearhead resistance to the occupation,” said senior official Salah Al-Bardaweel.
Israeli officials have voiced concern that militant groups in the Sinai have been making use of a security vacuum left by the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in February.
The Israeli shekel fell against the dollar and stocks dipped on Thursday. The violence appeared to take some domestic political pressure off Netanyahu: leaders of escalating protests against high living costs called off weekend demonstrations after news of the Israeli casualties broke.
Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, recently stepped up security activity in the Sinai.
On Tuesday, Egyptian security sources said an army crackdown on armed groups in the northern Sinai had netted four Islamist militants as they prepared to blow up a gas pipeline.
Israel is building a fence along its 180-km-long frontier with Egypt, but very few sections have been completed.