Enlarge imageBy Yehuda Peretz
SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) - Palestinian militants in Gaza fired rockets into an Israeli town on Tuesday during a visit by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, critically wounding one person, witnesses and ambulance workers said.
Commissioner Louise Arbour, on a tour of the Palestinian territories and Israel, was unhurt in the attack in Sderot, where each salvo increases right-wing pressure on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for more powerful military operations in Gaza.
"They (the rockets) landed a few hundred yards away from where we were," said Christopher Gunness, a U.N. spokesman who accompanied Arbour on the visit to town, which is often targeted by militants in Gaza.
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"She was in a car but the delegation had parked very briefly when we heard very loud explosions. There were two plumes of smoke," he said.
The Magen David Adom ambulance service said a factory worker was critically wounded.
Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, said it launched the makeshift rockets at Sderot and had not known Arbour would be there.
The salvo landed after Israeli troops killed a Hamas gunman in fighting in northern Gaza, where tank shelling also wounded three other Palestinians, hospital officials said.
"I want to express my sympathy to the family of the person who was wounded, to say how much I share their sense of hopelessness and vulnerability and frustration at being so exposed," said Arbour, who visited the impact site.
Arbour, a Canadian, arrived in Sderot from the Gaza Strip, where she called on political, military and militia leaders to ensure "the well-being of civilians" and break a cycle of violence.
In the Gaza Strip, she toured a town where Israeli shelling killed 19 Palestinian civilians on November 8. Israel said it had made a targeting error.
ILLEGAL WEAPONS
Hours before the Sderot attack, Israeli troops and tanks launched a deep raid against a Palestinian militant stronghold in the Gaza Strip, killing a gunman during clashes in which an elderly woman also died, witnesses and hospital officials said.
The officials said it was not immediately clear who fired at the 70-year-old woman. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to give details about the operation.
Israeli forces also entered Jabalya refugee camp and Beit Lahiya, a northern Gaza town, a launching ground for rockets.
Gunness said Arbour had made the point "very, very forcibly" in a conversation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he should exercise as much of his authority as possible to try to put an end to the rocket strikes.
"The position of the High Commissioner is that Qassam rockets are illegal under international law. The reason is that they are not accurate and (those firing them) cannot make a distinction between combatants and non-combatants," Gunness said.
Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, said: "There should be no sympathy for the enemy, which shows no sympathy for our women and children."
Israeli forces and settlers quit Gaza last year, but the military renewed ground operations in the strip after militants captured an Israeli soldier in a deadly border raid in June.
Israel has killed more than 370 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began the offensive, hospital officials and residents say. Three Israeli soldiers have been killed and a woman in Sderot has died in a rocket strike.
