Rocket Science

By Harriet Barovick, Ellin Martens and Sora Song

The Islamic group Hamas launched its new Qassam 1 rocket, which is based on an old North Korean design, toward an Israeli town last week. It landed in an open field, causing no casualties, but because of its range, the rocket could make the terror attacks of the intifadeh much more effective. Named for a military division of Hamas, the weapon has a range of 3 miles, far longer than Hamas' garage-built mortar shells. Palestinian security chiefs tell TIME that Hizballah operatives bought or stole a rocket from Syrian soldiers in Lebanon and smuggled it to Gaza, where a Hamas "engineering unit" made two duplicates.