Tel Aviv - Palestinian militants showered southern Israel with rockets Wednesday, causing Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to reverse a decision to open Gaza Strip crossing points to allow an aid convoy to enter the salient. Hamas said the barrage - which saw Israel hit with 68 rockets and mortars shells by late afternoon - was to avenge the deaths Tuesday night of three Hamas men whom Israel killed as they were planting a bomb on the Gaza-Israel border fence.
Each side has blamed the other for the latest escalation, which comes in wake of the expiration Friday morning of a six month truce between Israel and the Gaza militant groups.
"The deterioration in the south is the sole responsibility of Hamas ... which has torpedoed the quiet," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said.
"Our position is clear. Israel will respond to quiet with quiet, and respond to attacks with measures designed to protect our people," he said.
Hamas lawmaker Mushier al-Masri said Hamas' position was that "the Israeli occupation was behind ending the lull."
Since the ceasefire ended at 6 am (0400 GMT) Friday morning, militants have fired over 140 rockets and mortars, and Israel has responded with airstrikes on rocket-launching squads.
Most of the rockets and mortars were fired by the radical Islamic Jihad faction, or by other, smaller militant groups in the salient, but on Wednesday Hamas also took credit for some of the launchings.
On Tuesday a senior official of the Islamist organization had told an Egyptian daily that Hamas was willing to renew a truce with Israel without any new conditions being added, but on Wednesday another official from the organization denied this.
Hamas legislator al-Masri said the report Tuesday in the al-Ahram daily, quoting Mahmoud a-Zahar, was aimed at "weakening the Palestinian resistance powers that reject the free lull."
"What was reported by the al-Ahram is untrue and lies that Zahar did not say," he added, contradicting the office of Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, which on Tuesday confirmed al-Zahar's remarks.
The Israeli inner, or security, cabinet met in urgent session Wednesday afternoon to discuss the rocket fire, as calls grew in the Jewish state for action to be taken.
According to Israel Radio, the cabinet decided that Israel would respond at a time and place and to the extent to its own choosing.
After the first rockets fell before dawn and early Wednesday morning, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak reversed a decision to allow an aid convoy into the salient.
An Israeli defence ministry spokesman said a truck convoy with basic food products and medical supplies from international non- governmental organizations, which had been scheduled to enter Gaza Wednesday via Israel would not be allowed in, because of the rocket and mortar fire
On Monday Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, announced it had agreed to a one-day ceasefire at Egypt's request to allow the aid convoy to enter the strip.
However, the rocket and mortar fire resumed Tuesday and the Hamas military wing threatened Wednesday to increase the rocket attacks if Israel continued and expanded military raids into the Strip.
"We will ... put new thousands of Zionists into the firing range if the occupation's stupid acts increase," a statement by Izz el-Deen al- Qassam Brigades said.
Most of the rockets launched Wednesday came after 9 am (0700 GMT) and included two Grad missiles which struck the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, which lies about 13 kilometres north of the Gaza Strip.
One of the rockets landed in the garden of a house in Ahskelon, causing damage but no injuries.
Other missiles also struck the town of Sderot, about two kilometres east of Gaza, and villages and kibbutzim in the area, sending people into shock and causing considerable damage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said after meeting Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak Tuesday that Cairo would try to get Israel and Hamas to renew the ceasefire.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is slated to head for Cairo Thursday morning for talks with Mubarak about the Gaza violence.
Meanwhile a Palestinian civilian in the Gaza Strip, the brother of a correspondent for the Arabic service of Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, was seriously injured when a missile struck the front of his house in northern Gaza city, witnesses and medical sources.
Initial reports said it was a Palestinian missile aimed at Israel which had malfunctioned. At the time the missile struck, militants were launching rockets from near the house.
