Thursday, April 22, 2010

Rockets Fired at Eilat, Land in Jordan


Hillel Fendel
A7 News

After two hours of conflicting reports, it has been ascertained that one or two rockets were fired at Eilat, but did not land there. Shortly before 11:00 this morning, two or three explosions were heard in Eilat, and reports of rockets fired from Jordan or the Sinai at the southern port city began to surface. The reports took on various shames and forms, and nearly every permutation of Kassams and Katyushas fired from Jordan and Sinai towards Eilat was reported until around 1 PM, when the army finally announced that no findings of rocket blasts had been located in the city.

It then began to become clear that rockets had landed in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, adjacent to Eilat. Egypt denied that missiles had been over-shot from its territory, while a Jordanian security source soon announced that the rockets had been under-shot from within Jordanian territory, not reaching their target of Eilat.



An official Jordanian government spokesman said only that an explosion had occurred in a warehouse north of Aqaba, causing damage but no casualties.

Israel has been officially at peace with Jordan since 1994, though King Abdullah recently said that his country was better off economically before it signed the peace agreement with Israel. "Our relationship with Israel is at an all-bottom low," he added.

Previous Eilat Attacks

Though it has a quiet reputation, this is not the first time that Eilat has been targeted by terrorists, via rockets or otherwise. In February 1968, the city was shelled by Jordanian katyusha rockets, and again in December 2005; damage was caused to a car on a city street in the latter attack. In August 1969, Egyptians fired rockets at Eilat.

In November 1990, some 20 kilometers north of Eilat, an Egyptian soldier opened fire at a group of Israeli, murdering four. On May 30, 1992, two Arabs who swam to Israel from Aqaba killed a guard at the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in southern Eilat. On Jan. 29, 2007, a Palestinian suicide terrorist detonated himself inside a bakery in the city, killing three.

Comment: This is simply a test, to see how e will respond, how the media will play it-did you even hear this happened today? The next 48 hours will tell the story as to whether or not Hamas wants to escalate.

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