GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP):

Even with their leaders driven into hiding, the battered Islamic militants of Hamas managed to fire dozens of rockets deep into southern Israel yesterday in a sign of the limits of Israel's Gaza offensive. One Israeli was killed and four seriously wounded.

Israel, meanwhile, turned the force of its punishing air assault toward Hamas field operatives in Gaza, sending warplanes to bomb their houses in a sweep meant to tear at the roots of the militant organisation.

The intensified rocket strikes by militants, which triggered the Israeli offensive, have revealed the expanding range of missiles in their stockpiles. Larger cities farther inside Israel are now vulnerable.

First casualities

In the latest strike, militants sent a missile crashing into a bus station in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod, 23 miles (38 kilometres) from Gaza. Three people were injured, two of them seriously, becoming the first casualities in the city of 190,000 residents.

Two people were also seriously wounded by a missile in the western Negev desert, closer to the Gaza border.