By DPA
Tel Aviv : Parents and teachers in Sderot Tuesday launched a strike in secondary schools to protest the almost daily barrage of rockets fired at the southern Israeli town from the Gaza Strip, Israel Radio reported.
The parents demanded that the Israeli government arrange for their children to study out of town and outside the rockets’ range.
Militants in Gaza have launched at least nine Gaza-made Qassam rockets at southern Israel since Monday, one of which struck near a kindergarten in Sderot, sending 12 children into shock.
The Islamic Jihad faction claimed responsibility for most of the rockets, calling them a “present” for the new school year.
Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of the hardline Likud party called for a large-scale ground offensive in Gaza, saying air strikes at the rocket launchers were “not enough”.
The military must reoccupy the areas in northern Gaza from where the rockets were being fired, he told Israel Radio.
The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the centrist Kadima party and Defence Minister Ehud Barak of the centre-left Labour Party has “failed” to provide security for Israeli citizens and must “go home”, Netanyahu charged.