Palestinian militants fired a rocket into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing a Thai agricultural worker, while the European Union’s foreign affairs chief was visiting the Hamas-controlled enclave.
The EU’s top diplomat, Briton Catherine Ashton, had crossed into the Gaza Strip from Israel about an hour before the attack, the first deadly strike from the territory since the end in January 2009 of Israel’s Gaza war.
An unknown Gaza group, Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility for the attack, launched a day before the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators was to meet in Moscow to discuss ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Israeli police and the Magen David Adom ambulance service said the rocket struck Netiv Ha’asara, an agricultural community, killing a Thai worker.
Palestinian militants have been carrying out sporadic rocket and mortar bomb attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, usually without causing any casualties.
The number of such strikes has dropped dramatically since the December 2008-January 2009 war that Israel launched in the Gaza Strip with the declared aim of ending such attacks.
Israel has responded to strikes since the war with air raids, targeting militants and suspected weapons-manufacturing facilities in the territory.
Hamas Islamists, who seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 in fighting with forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have been urging other militant groups not to mount attacks on Israel, voicing concern about retaliation.
Ansar al-Sunna, a name also used by Al-Qaeda allies in Iraq and similar to names used in the Gaza Strip, indicated the group belongs to hardline Salafist factions in the Palestinian enclave which have challenged Hamas.
