Via the AP: Hezbollah fires rockets deeper into Israel

Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced it used a new rocket, the Khaibar-1 — named after a famed battle between Islam’s prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula — to strike the northern Israeli town of Afula. Guerrilla rockets have hit near town before, but this attack was the deepest yet.

Israeli police said five rockets hit outside Afula but caused no injuries.

The strike came two days after Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vowed his guerrillas would fire rockets beyond Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, which has been hit repeatedly in the conflict.

The group did not specify the range of the new rocket or give other details. But Israeli police said it was the first time a missile of this type has hit Israel and that it carried 220 pounds of explosives. That is about the size of the payload of the Fajr-3 rocket that Hezbollah has fired previously, but the Fajr-3 is not believed to have the range to hit Afula.

The heaviest known Hezbollah rocket is the Fajr-5, with a 440-pound payload and a range of 45 miles, able to hit Tel Aviv’s northern outskirts.

Of course, deeper strikes has the potential to cause the Israeli cabinet to reserve its decision and to widen the war. If after all of this pounding Hezbollah still has weapons superior to those used to date, then the degree to which the air and ground assaults to date have been successful will be of serious question.