This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

Israel's three-day offensive failed to stop Palestinian militants firing rockets and mortars into Israel yesterday, killing three civilians and a soldier in a series of attacks.

Hamas claimed to have fired 43 homemade rockets, 17 longer-range Grads and six mortars across the border.

The deaths brought the tally of civilian fatalities from rocket strikes to 19 since 2002, when militants in Gaza first began firing missiles at Israeli towns.

An Israeli-Arab labourer was killed and 10 other people were wounded yesterday morning when a Katyusha rocket struck a building site in Ashkelon, 10 miles from Gaza. It was the first death in the southern seaside town, whose residents have grown increasingly anxious since rockets began exploding around it two years ago.

"You can hear them whistling, you don't know where it's coming from and where it's going, or where it's going to land," said the head of Asheklon's community services, David Wolfson.

Fifteen rockets have exploded in the centre of the city since Saturday and scores more have landed on the city's outer limits.

Shai Biton, 15, whose family moved from Sderot to Ashkelon two years ago to escape the daily attacks, said: "I never know when a rocket is going to land."

While some residents have fled, most have remained, though few stray out of doors.

Last night one person was killed and another seriously wounded in the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.

Soon afterwards, a woman was killed and two others injured when another rocket struck a bus stop in the port city of Ashdod, north of Ashkelon. An Israeli soldier was killed in a mortar attack, the first to be killed in the latest round of violence. The bigger, Grad-style Katyushas are said to have a range of up to 50 miles, which means they fly much further than the Qassams that typically bombard towns closer to Gaza, such as Sderot.