Into the second week of Corporal Gilad Shalit's hostage ordeal, both sides have turned up the heat. Israel, which responded to its soldier's kidnapping first by bombing bridges and Gaza's power station, sending in the army and arresting dozens of Hamas leaders in the West Bank, has bombed government offices and the Islamic University, Hamas's educational stronghold, in Gaza. In reply, on July 4th, the corporal's Palestinian captors broke off talks with Egyptian mediators. Since then, two Qassam rockets launched from the Gaza Strip have hit the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, the farthest these homemade tubes of explosive have ever flown; one crashed into the car park of a school. Hamas's military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility.
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