Palestinian war criminals attack day care center

AP/Houston Chronicle:

A Palestinian rocket landed in a courtyard next to a crowded day care center in this southern Israeli town today, sending panicked mothers scrambling to rush their screaming toddlers to safety.

None of the 15 children at the center was hurt. But frantic parents across the city — already furious over the government's failure to protect them and their children from the near-daily rocket fire — pulled their children out of schools on the second day of the academic year and it was unclear whether studies would resume.

The army said seven rockets were fired this morning at Sderot, a frequently targeted city that lies just a mile from the Gaza Strip. The Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility.

At the day care center, caregivers and female soldiers tried to calm screaming children as mothers hurried in to take them home. In an empty lot nearby, explosives experts investigated the rocket's remnants.

Batya Katar, head of the Sderot Parents Association, said parents were pulling all 2,500 of the town's students out of school.

"Buses are already on the way to pick up students who haven't been taken home already," Katar told The Associated Press by telephone, the voices of panicked parents audible in the background. The government promised to move students to classrooms out of the city if there was an escalation in Palestinian rocket fire, she said, but there was no sign of any solution.

"The school year is over. We can't hold on any more," Katar said.

At one Sderot school, Nahum Bitton arrived to take his children home.

"Of course I'll take them out. Should I leave them in the hands of Hamas?" Bitton told AP Television News. The Islamic militants of Hamas have ruled the Gaza strip since June.

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The responsibility for this attempted atrocity lies with Hamas and its egregious rocket attacks with reckless disregard for where they land. Even the terrorist rights organizations condemned Hezballah's use of this tactic of terrorizing civilians. The people responsible for these attacks deserve the criticism.