AFP - Three civilians were killed in southern Israel on Monday by rockets fired by Palestinian militants inside the Islamist-controlled Gaza Strip, medical services said.
  
One man was killed and another eight people wounded, three seriously, in the southern city of Ashkelon. The second fatality was at the Nahal Oz kibbutz just north of the border with the Gaza Strip, medics said.
  
An Israeli woman also died of her wounds after a rocket hit a railyard in the town of Ashdod. Another four people were wounded, according to a spokesman for the Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross.
  
The deadly kibbutz attack was later claimed in a statement by the Al-Quds Brigades, armed wing of the radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement.
  
The Ashkelon blast came in the city centre near a building site which Israeli media said employed mostly Arab workers.
  
Medics said the man killed was an Israeli Arab working on the site in the city that lies some 13 kilometres (eight miles) north of the Gaza Strip, which Hamas has ruled since June 2007.
  
The armed wing of Hamas claimed responsibility for that attack, saying it had fired "three Grad-type rockets" at Ashkelon.
  
Four civilians have now been killed inside Israel by Palestinian militant fire since Saturday, when Israel unleashed a massive air blitz of the Gaza Strip that has since killed at least 345 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,550, according to medics.
  
Magen David Adom said the Ashdod blast was caused by a Grad-type rocket with a range of 40 kilometres (25 miles). The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said in a statement in Gaza it had fired the rocket.
  
Israeli emergency services said three missiles also hit Ofakim in the Negev desert around 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Gaza, wounding one person, while another three rockets fell in the Ashdod area without causing casualties.
  
Grad rockets are more accurate than the Qassams more usually used by Palestinian armed groups.
  
People living in southern Israel within 20 kilometres (13 miles) of the border with Gaza have been advised since Saturday to remain in public or private shelters whenever possible.
  
When Israeli radar scans detect an inbound rocket, local people have less than a minute to take shelter.