Just after 10 p.m. on Friday, October 26th sirens warning of incoming missiles sounded in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Throughout the night and the following morning over thirty rockets and mortars were fired at Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip. A number of residents suffered minor injuries.
“Thirty-four rockets were fired at Israel overnight and Saturday morning, according to the IDF, 13 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. Two of the rockets fell in Gaza and the rest landed in open areas.
The Defense Ministry’s liaison to the Palestinians said a mortar launched during the barrages struck the ambulance terminal at the Erez border crossing, the sole pedestrian passage between Gaza and Israel.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group claimed responsibility for the missile fire and Israel responded with strikes on terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip belonging to the PIJ and Hamas.
The attacks were of course covered by major media outlets such as the New York Times and the Telegraph as well as by agencies such as Reuters – but not by the BBC. After civilians living in southern Israeli communities had been forced to spend the night in bomb shelters and safe rooms due to some 14 barrages of rocket fire, on the morning of Saturday October 27th the BBC News website’s Middle East page looked like this:
And on the morning of Sunday October 28th:
Since the beginning of this year terror groups in the Gaza strip have carried out rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilians on nineteen different occasions. The BBC’s English-speaking audiences have been informed of just seven of those incidents, meaning that in the event of a broader Israeli response to that ongoing terrorism, audiences will lack an understanding of the background to such a development.
