Israel buses hundreds from border town after rockets

SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) - Crowds of panicky Israelis pushed and shoved onto buses to take them out of Sderot on Thursday, as authorities moved civilians out of the town on the Gaza border for the first time after a wave of rocket attacks.

It was mostly women and children who took advantage of the Defense Ministry's first offer to bus them away for the weekend to hotels in northern Israel.

Government officials, usually unwilling to organize the moving of residents out of frontline towns to avoid the appearance of retreat, denied it was an official "evacuation".

Simcha Rahamim, 53, had arrived to see if she could find room on a bus for her 16-year-old daughter Vered who was in shock after a Palestinian rocket slammed into her high school classroom on Thursday morning, injuring a teacher.

"She was right next to a hole that rocket punched through the floor. I got this phone call and all I could hear was screaming at the other end. She's a basket case, and I've got to get her out of here," Rachamim said.

Angela Sidkilov said: "Yesterday I had to take four valium to calm down. I have to get out of here," explaining how a rocket slammed into a yard next to hers.

Sderot has been sporadically hit by rockets from Gaza for seven years. Few of these Qassam missiles, fashioned from piping, have caused injuries. In all, seven people have died in a town whose population is about 20,000. But in the past two days more than 60 rockets have slammed into Sderot, injuring nine people, with dozens more treated for shock, police said.

"The number of Qassams has been high, and the damage great. We think we have taken enough," said town spokesman Yossi Cohen.

About 800 were expected to leave by the day's end, he said.

"NO EVACUATION"

Past evacuations from places in the line of fire have been organized by individuals rather than authorities.

"We aren't evacuating Sderot," Cohen, the town spokesman, asserted, making clear that only some were being sent away for a breather while the vast majority were staying on.

The buses, paid for by the Israeli government, seemed a sign Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was trying to alleviate public pressure on his government to strike harder in Gaza, where Israel wants to stay out of a raging factional war.

In the office of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, an official also stressed there was no long-term plan to move people out of Sderot, home to many immigrants from the former Soviet Union:

"The State of Israel has not declared any evacuation ... a plan has been launched to permit residents to leave for a limited period for rest and relaxation," the official said.

Sderot has become a symbol for many Israelis of the government's failure to secure peace despite pulling troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005. Hamas and other groups say rocket strikes are part of their continuing campaign against Israel.

Many in the town, where unemployment is high, think the government has abandoned them to the rockets and that short-term relief is no substitute for action against militants:

"The situation is awful. What the government should really be doing is telling them in Gaza that one more rocket and they'll all be gone," Eyal Hajbi, an unemployed farmer, said.

"Where has our security gone? I don't care how much they steal," he said of Israel's scandal-worn political leadership. "Just give me a little bit of safety. That's all I ask."