Palestinian militants carried out their deepest rocket strike against Israel today in defiance of a Palestinian Authority clampdown and efforts by Washington to stem a tide of violence threatening a U.S.-backed peace plan.
A Qassam-2 rocket, a makeshift weapon produced by the militant Islamic group Hamas, landed near a lifeguard station on Zikim beach, eight kilometres north of the Gaza Strip, but caused no casualties or damage, Israeli military sources said.
The attack followed the start of what Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan called a "campaign of a number of security measures to restore law and order in the Gaza Strip".
Palestinian security forces yesterday began to shut down tunnels used by militants to smuggle weapons from Egypt into the southern Gaza Strip, and arrested several suspects.
US President George W. Bush called on the Palestinians to "dismantle terrorist networks" as mandated by the peace "road map" he promoted at a June 4 Middle East summit.
His envoy, John Wolf, has been holding talks in the area to try to defuse tensions.
It was not immediately clear whether Dahlan's forces would begin disarming military groups, which on Thursday declared dead a seven-week-old ceasefire after Israel killed a top Hamas leader in a helicopter missile strike in the Gaza Strip.
The assassination was a response to a Hamas suicide bombing that killed 21 people on a Jerusalem bus on Tuesday, an attack which the group called retaliation for Israeli raids.
Previous Qassam-1 and Qassam-2 attacks in a nearly three-year-old uprising for statehood have been largely directed at Jewish settlements in Gaza and an area around the Israeli town of Sderot, five kilometres to the east.
They have caused little damage and few casualties.
The northerly direction of the rocket fired today is likely to sound alarm bells in Israel. A major Israeli power plant is located in the Zikkim area and the resort town of Ashkelon is just to the north.