A Thai worker was killed yesterday as Palestinian militants fired a rocket at Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Foreign Ministry said. This is the first death from a rocket attack since Israel started its Gaza offensive last year.
The ministry's deputy spokesman Thani Thongpakdi said the unnamed man was about 30 and had been working in an agricultural community just north of Gaza since September 2006. The Foreign Ministry is trying to contact his family to inform them about his death.
The Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv is also speaking to the man's employer, job broker and insurance company to bring his body back home, he said.
Some 30,000 Thais work in Israel, though 3,000 of them are placed in risky areas near Gaza.
Associated Press reported that a small Islamic faction calling itself Ansar alSunna claimed responsibility for the attack. Similar hardline groups, which are inspired by alQaeda's radical ideology and see Gaza's Hamas rulers as too moderate, have been responsible for most of the attacks since the Gaza war ended in January 2009.
A second group, the alAqsa Martyrs' Brigades, also claimed responsibility later.
