New Fatah-al Aqsa 27-range missile brings the entire Ashkelon district into range

debkafile‘s counter-terror sources report: The Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades of the Gaza Strip announced Tuesday, Jan. 24, receipt of a new surface missile, designated No. 207, whose 27- kilometer range covers the entire district of the Israeli port of Ashkelon. Our military sources add that a missile with this range could also hit the towns of Netivot, Ofakim and places west of Beersheba, capital of the Negev. They identify the new weapon as the Russian short-range Grad 121mm. On Jan 3, Shin Beit director Yuval Diskin reported this weapon had been smuggled into the Gaza Strip to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. Three days earlier, on Dec. 29, al Qaeda’s Iraq leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on northern Israel, reported that al Qaeda cells in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip had acquired Grad missiles.