Report: Hamas using bigger rockets

JERUSALEM, June 4 (UPI) -- A report published Wednesday says Hamas has upped the ante in its rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza by procuring more powerful Iranian-made weapons.

Citing unnamed military sources, the Israeli Web site DEBKAfile.com reported that Hamas used the new weapon, a multiple-launch rocket with an eight-kilogram explosive payload, for the first time Tuesday in an attack aimed at Shaar Henegev in Israel. The Web site said it's the same vehicle-launched weapon used against Israel by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.

The development "drastically escalates" attacks by Palestinians on Israel's southwestern flank, the Web site claims, adding that Hamas obtained the weapons through smuggling operations from Iran and the Sudan.

The weapons, it says, are loaded onto smugglers' boats in the Suez Canal and unloaded on the Sinai coast. DEBKAfile.com contends that Egyptian police, while improving in their anti-smuggling efforts, are sometimes bribed to look the other way.