GAZA CITY, 26 May 2007 — Sending a message to Hamas, Israeli warplanes yesterday destroyed an outpost outside Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s residence in the Al-Shati refugee camp. Witnesses and security sources said that a Palestinian was injured in the attack.
Israeli Army confirmed the attack, but said Haniyeh was not the target but rather a nearby outpost used by Hamas. Witnesses said Haniyeh, wearing a tracksuit, inspected the site but his bodyguards pulled him away because the Israeli warplanes were still in the sky.
Israel has said in recent weeks that top Hamas leaders are in its crosshairs for allegedly directing rocket attacks into southern Israel. On Thursday it detained 73 Hamas leaders in occupied West Bank and Defense Minister Amir Peretz said it was better to arrest than murder them.
Elsewhere, two Palestinians were killed and four injured in Israeli attacks. Two members of the military wing of Hamas were killed in a missile strike on their vehicle in an eastern district of Gaza City. A third fighter showed no sign of brain activity but doctors at the city’s Shifa Hospital said they could not pronounce him dead.
In Israel, three people were wounded when a rocket slammed into the courtyard of a home in the southern town of Sderot, police said. The military wing of Hamas said its fighters carried out the attack.
On Thursday night, Israeli aircraft launched seven sorties striking suspected strongholds of Hamas whose fighters have fired a barrage of rockets at Israel. Medical sources said five people were wounded in the strikes.
The Israeli warplanes also hit a money exchange office in the center of Gaza City. No one was injured but the office was completely destroyed. Another airstrike targeted a metal workshop in Al-Shaboura refugee camp near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Palestinian and Egyptian officials meanwhile said Egypt would host talks in the coming days with Palestinian politicians in a bid to ease factional tensions that erupted in violence this month in Gaza.
Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister Azzam Al-Ahmad, a close aide to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah movement, said that he and another Fatah leader, Rawhi Fattouh, would travel to Cairo today to meet Egyptian officials.
“The aim of the meeting is to cement the cease-fire, to make sure that there will be no return to internal fighting,” Ahmad said, adding that the Fatah representatives would also discuss ways of negotiating a comprehensive cease-fire with Israel. An official close to arrangements for the talks said Egypt was also inviting leaders of Fatah’s main rival Hamas for similar talks.
— Additional input from agencies
