Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday ordered the army to step up targeted killings of Palestinians involved in Qassam rocket attacks against Israel, local newspaper the Jerusalem Post reported.

According to the report, Peretz's order was made after three rockets launched from northern Gaza Strip landed on southern Israel earlier this day. No casualty and damage was reported in the attacks.

During a security consultation on Thursday, security officials told Peretz that Hamas had stepped up its involvement in Qassam rocket attacks against Israel.

Peretz then ordered the defense establishment to step up its offensive operations against the Qassam cells and to target " anyone" behind the attacks including Hamas officials, said the post.

"No terrorist from any of the organizations will be immune if they engage in anti-Israel terror activity," Peretz was quoted as saying.

On Wednesday, a rocket rammed into a house in the Israeli border city of Sderot and exploded in the bedroom of a 17-year-old student who had left for school moments earlier.

After the rocket firings, the Israeli army targeted a structure used for manufacturing and storage of rockets in Gaza, which was operated by the Palestinian leftist Popular Resistance Committees, the army said in a statement.

The army also targeted several access routes to Palestinian militant rocket launching sites in the northern Gaza Strip in a bid to halt repeated rocket firings.

Meanwhile, mayor of the southwestern city of Sderot, which has sustained frequent rocket attacks in recent days, warned Wednesday that if the government did not take action, Sderot residents would move out of the dangerous place and that the city might become a ghost town.

Source: Xinhua