GAZA CITY, 10 June 2007 — In a daring raid, Palestinian gunmen broke through Israel’s heavily fortified Gaza border and battled troops inside Israel for about two hours yesterday.
In the first cross-border incursion in a year, the fighters made an abortive attempt to capture an Israeli soldier, leaving one of the raiders killed. The military said no soldiers were harmed in the attack, similar to the one when Palestinians killed two soldiers and captured a third a year ago.
The Israel military said troops shot dead one of the raiders. Palestinians said another three fighters escaped back to Gaza unharmed.
Israeli public radio and Palestinian security sources said that the attackers were driving a jeep which the radio said was disguised as an Israeli Army vehicle.
The army spokesman said the fighters used a vehicle marked “TV” to approach the military post. The Islamic Jihad group said it carried out yesterday’s attack, near the Kissufim crossing between Gaza and Israel, along with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an arm of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement.
Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, said that four fighters broke through the Gaza border fence and launched an assault on soldiers. He said three of the fighters returned to Gaza unharmed, but Islamic Jihad fighter Mohammed Jaabari, 19, was killed in the fight.
Abu Ahmed said the raiders meant to snatch a soldier but the attempt was foiled when Israeli helicopter gunships arrived on the scene.
“The aim of the operation was to withdraw with the soldier in captivity,” he said, “But the participation of Israeli helicopters prevented that.” On June 25 last year Palestinian infiltrators killed two soldiers and snatched one in a cross-border near the Kerem Shalom frontier post, about 22 kilometers (15 miles) south of the site of yesterday’s shootout. The captured soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, is still missing.
A five-month truce between the Gaza fighters and Israel collapsed in flames in May when a string of Palestinian rocket attacks into southern Israel triggered Israeli airstrikes in response.
Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been scheduled to meet in the West Bank this week to discuss the latest round of violence, but the Palestinians called it off, accusing Israel of rejecting all their proposals in preparatory talks.
Israel will only talk to Abbas, shunning the Palestinian government headed by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.
Hamas has shrugged off international demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist, but a senior official yesterday took what appeared to be a softer line, saying only that Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem.
“Now there is one team, one program, one united government,” Moussa Abu Marzouk, a deputy to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, said in an interview published yesterday in the Hamas-linked “Palestine.” newspaper. “So there is a big chance to reach the goal we agreed upon at this stage, which is a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem,” he said.
Meanwhile, fresh fighting erupted yesterday between rival Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, wounding at least four people, hospital officials said.
The Hamas and Fatah groups each accused the other of sparking the gunbattle in the southern town of Rafah.
Hospital officials said the wounded included a civilian, two Hamas gunmen and one from Abbas’ Fatah movement.
Rafah was the scene of factional fighting on Thursday in which one man was killed, the first fatality in such a gunbattle since a truce took effect in mid-May.
— With input from agencies
