GAZA CITY/JERUSALEM, 7 September 2006 — Six Palestinians including five members of Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas movement, were killed and dozens were wounded in separate Israeli attacks on the southern of the Gaza Strip late Tuesday and early yesterday, witnesses and medical sources said.
Witnesses said that early yester morning about 20 tanks and five military bulldozers backed by combat helicopters rolled into Khoza village eastern Khan Younis city in the south of the Gaza Strip. The invading forces unleashed heavy and indiscriminate firing from the tanks and helicopter gunships resulting in the death of two Palestinians and wounding ten others.
In Khoza, ground troops conducted house-to-house searches, arrested 10 Palestinians and churned up land with a bulldozer. The Israeli army spokeswoman said people were being questioned and released, as part of the latest ground operation.
At least 210 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its massive operation to recover Shalit, returning troops to a territory they had left in September 2006 after a 38-year occupation.
Medical sources identified the two killed as Mohammad Abu Reda, 25, and Ismail Abu El-Rook, 16. The sources added that Abu Reda was killed due to missile shrapnel’s fired form an Israeli drone and Abu El-Rook died in the hospital after receiving a live bullet in his chest by the Israeli soldiers.
Abu Reda was an activist of Hamas movement. Witnesses said that the military operation in Khoza village was ongoing. Israeli security sources said that the operation in Khan Younis aimed to search for tunnels adding that the army targeted two armed men who came close to the fence in Khan Younis.
Late on Tuesday, the Israeli warplanes targeted a car carrying members of Al-Qassam Brigades in Sadam street to the north of Rafah City, where two militants were killed and others were wounded.
Less than an hour later, another Israeli air raid targeted another local car in the same area killing two other militants of Al-Qassam Brigades and wounding other civilians. Sources in the Al-Qassam Brigades identified the four killed as, Ahmad Ashor, Ahmad El-Arqan, Aed Al-Bashite and Ahmad El-Nashar.
Living conditions for the 1.4 million people in Gaza have also deteriorated sharply since Israel bombed its only power station on June 28 and after the West ended direct aid when Hamas took office six months ago. Life in the Gaza Strip has become “miserable and dangerous” after six months of fiscal and political crisis, John Ging, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, told AFP in an interview.
“Every day seems to get worse. The prospects are very bleak because we have seen nothing in six months but deterioration,” he said. “All the elements of a civilized existence are falling apart: there is a lack of food, no electricity, no salaries, the public services are crumbling.” On Saturday, public workers went on an open-ended strike in order to demand better pay, in mass industrial action that Haniyeh has warned may have “dangerous consequences.”
Since March, Ging says the UN has added another 100,000 people to the number benefiting from food aid, an increase of 15 percent to a total of 830,000. Living conditions further nosedived after Israeli jets bombed the only power plant in the Gaza Strip in late June, subjecting the crowded territory to stringent electricity and water rationing.
A recent UN report said Gazans get between six and eight hours of power a day and families in built-up areas get two or three hours of running water.
