Rocket Strikes Sderot Day Care Center; Islamic Jihad Calls the Attack "A Present for the New School Year."

A salvo of seven Kassam rockets hit the sourthern Israeli town of Sderot on Monday morning. One of the rockets slammed into the courtyard of a day care center, where 15 babies receive care. Thank God, no one was wounded in the attack, although twelve people, including some of the babies at the day care center were treated for shock.

The Jerusalem Post reports, "Despite the fact that none of the 15 babies at the center were wounded, 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." The Sderot Parents Association decided they would not take their children to schools and day care centers beginning Tuesday, until the government changed its policy regarding ongoing Kassam rocket attacks on the western Negev town.

"Of course I'll take them out. Should I leave them in the hands of Hamas?" one parent told Associated Press Television News, as he arrived to remove his children from school.

Islamic Jihad took credit for the attack, saying on its internet site that it had launched nine Kuds-3 rockets, and that the attack was "a present for the start of the new school year."

In last summer's Lebanon fighting, when Hezbollah mounted missile and artillery emplacements next to civilian apartment buildings, Israel received international condemnation when children were injured or killed in the course of Israeli airstrikes against military targets. In the case of Sderot, Islamic Jihad has proudly taken credit for attacks directed at children. We wait for the world to speak out, but we do not hold our breath.

(H/T: Little Green Footballs.)