Israel / Palestine

Gaza Rocket Attack Into Israel Kills a Thai Worker
By Fares Akram and Isabel Kershner
The New York Times, March 18, 2010
"A foreign worker in Israel was killed Thursday by a rocket fired from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory of Gaza, according to the Israeli military, soon after the European Union's top foreign policy official arrived here on a rare visit by such a high-ranking official. The foreign agricultural worker, who the Israeli military said was from Thailand, was the first fatality from Gaza rocket fire since the end of a three-week Israeli military offensive into Gaza in January 2009. Israel said the primary purpose of its military campaign was to halt years of rocket fire from Gaza against southern Israel. The rocket on Thursday struck an Israeli cooperative farm called Nativ Haasara, near the Gaza border. Jund Ansar al-Sunna, a small, fiercely anti-Western jihadist group that challenges Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack. The European Union's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Baroness Catherine Ashton, is the most senior European official to visit Gaza since the Islamic militant group Hamas took power there in 2007. ... Israel and Egypt have imposed a strict economic embargo on the area, allowing in only basic supplies. [...]"