A small-caliber, unguided, Soviet-made, ground-to-ground rocket. Variants were used against Israeli targets by the Egyptian army in the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and by the Palestine Liberation Organization during its years of presence in southern Lebanon. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Katyusha rockets were fired at Israeli positions in southern Lebanon and at Israeli towns and villages in the northern Galilee by Lebanon-based Hezbollah, AMAL Shi'ite guerillas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The Katyusha was also one of the weapons of choice used by Palestinian factions to harass Gaza Strip settlements, as well as Sderot, and other Israeli towns close to the Gaza Strip both before and after the summer 2005 unilateral disengagement.
See also Terrorism.
Historical Dictionary of Israel. Bernard Reich David H. Goldberg. Edited by Jon Woronoff..