Rockets pound Israel after air raid kills 5 in Gaza

An Israeli air raid killed five Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, prompting a barrage of retaliatory rocket fire which wounded one Israeli, officials said. Adham Abu Selmiya, spokesman for Gaza's emergency services, said that five members of the Al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad's armed wing, were killed and three critically wounded in the Israeli attack. An Israeli military spokesman told AFP that the air force fired on a "group of terrorists preparing to fire long-range rockets" and that the attack had "prevented the attempted firing." The Al-Quds Brigades confirmed that five of its members, including a commander it named as Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil, were killed in the strike on its training camp near the southern city of Rafah. The group immediately vowed revenge for the air raid, the worst such incident since a tacit ceasefire was agreed between Gaza Palestinian militants and Israel in late August. "This attack is a crime that will not go unpunished," a statement said. "The Zionist enemy should expect to pay a high price." The reprisal attacks apparently came after sunset when according to police seven rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, with one wounding an Israeli, one slamming into a community centre and another into a residential building. Rockets hit the city of Ashdod, 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the Gaza border and the nearby town of Gan Yavneh, police said. "One hit Gan Yavneh ... where a person was lightly wounded (by shrapnel)," spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP. Police said that four rockets landed in Ashdod, one of which hit an empty community centre and another a residential building. "It was a direct hit, but there are no immediate reports of casualties," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said of the strike on the residential building. Another rocket fell elsewhere in southern Israel, in open ground nearer to Gaza and one was fired "in the general direction" of the city of Beersheeva, in the Negev desert, but appeared to have fallen on open ground, police said. A statement from the Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. Al-Quds spokesman Abu Ahmed accused Israel of carrying out the raid in order to heighten tensions so it could renege on freeing 550 Palestinian prisoners agreed as part of a prisoner-swap deal with Gaza rulers Hamas for the liberation of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel released 477 prisoners in exchange for Shalit earlier this month and is due to free the other 550 within two months. A spokesman for Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said other militant groups were mulling their response. "The occupation is completely responsible for the crime in Rafah and all of the resistance factions cannot leave the shedding of our martyrs' blood unanswered," spokesman Abu Obeida said. "We shall discuss the answer to this crime." The Israeli military spokesman said the men targeted on Saturday had also been responsible for firing a Grad rocket into Israel on Wednesday that hit near Ashdod. The Israeli air force carried out three raids on the Gaza Strip Thursday in retaliation for that attack, witnesses said. Those raids targeted areas east and west of Khan Yunis in the south of the Strip, and a base of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades was hit, they said. An Israeli army spokesman said of those strikes that aircraft had "attacked three terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip as well as an arms factory in the south of the territory."