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JERUSALEM - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip lobbed crude homemade rockets at an Israeli town Monday, killing a 3-year-old boy and an Israeli man - the first fatalities in an attack of this kind in 45 months of conflict.
The militant Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the missile attack, which targeted the Negev desert town of Sderot, half a mile from the boundary between Gaza and Israel proper.
In recent years, Palestinian militants, primarily from the military wing of Hamas, have fired hundreds of makeshift Kassam-2 rockets at Israeli communities and Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. But the primitive projectiles cannot be aimed with any degree of accuracy, and they usually fall harmlessly.
This time, however, one of the rockets slammed to earth near an Israeli child care center, killing a nursery school boy and an Israeli man who was passing by.
Soon after the first strike, a second rocket hit near a small shopping area in Sderot, blowing out car windows. Two more rockets fell inside Sderot, and a fifth one fell in an open field outside the town.
Early today, Israeli helicopters fired three missiles into a 16-story building in Gaza City, hitting the third-floor offices of Al-Jeel, a media outlet run by Hamas. Two people were hurt. Minutes later, helicopters fired a missile at a building housing a metal workshop in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The Israeli army said Hamas used the media center to release claims of responsibility and distribute inflammatory material. The workshop was used for making rockets, the army said.
Several tanks rolled into northern Gaza late Monday and more armored vehicles assembled at the Gaza border, along with dozens of troops - a precursor to what Israeli security officials said could be a prolonged operation in Gaza to prevent Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli border towns.
The attack in Sderot came less than 12 hours after Palestinian militants managed to blow up an Israeli army outpost in Gaza late Sunday by packing an underground tunnel with explosives. Although the casualty toll was relatively light - one soldier killed and five injured - the incident caused an outcry Monday, with politicians across the spectrum demanding to know why the army had not anticipated such a strike and taken measures to prevent it.
The rocket fell in Sderot about 8 a.m., just as parents were dropping children off at nursery school.
"As soon as I heard the noise - boom! - I ran outside, and everything was full of smoke," said Mimi Shushan, a teacher's assistant.
"At first, my little daughter thought the sound was a balloon that popped," said Lizette Cohen Sharvit. "Before this, we told her that Kassams only fall in fields and make noise, that they hurt no one."
Authorities identified the dead boy as Afik Zahavi. His mother, Ruth, was hospitalized in serious condition. Also killed was Mordechai Yosopov, 49.
Seven other Israelis were injured, at least two of them seriously.