GAZA CITY/RAMALLAH, 7 February 2008 — Israel warplanes continued to bombard the Gaza Strip yesterday. Three separate air raids were carried overnight and early yesterday, resulting in the injuring of five Palestinians, among them two members of Hamas, witnesses and medical sources said.
In the last airstrike yesterday on the Jabliya refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli warplanes targeted a group of Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, while trying to fire number of homemade rockets toward Israel. The sources said that two members of Hamas were wounded, one seriously. During the night, the Israeli warplanes carried out two other airstrikes against Hamas fighters but they survived the strikes and three peoples were wounded.
Several groups resumed their attacks on Israel by homemade rockets and mortar shells yesterday, in retaliation for the killing of nine Hamas members in two separate Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Al-Qassam Brigades said yesterday that its fighters fired 26 homemade rockets into Israel since Tuesday night. In a statement sent to the press they said that 14 homemade rockets landed into the southern Israeli town of Sderot during the night.
“These rockets are an initial response to the Zionist crimes against our people and against the unfair siege imposed on the Gaza Strip,” the Brigades vowed. Separately, Abu Al-Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that its fighters launched two homemade projectiles at Sderot and the nearby city of Ashkelon. They also said the attack came in retaliation for Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel decided yesterday to start building a reinforced fence along parts of its porous border with Egypt in a bid to prevent infiltration attempts by Palestinian militants, an official told reporters. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense and foreign ministers decided on the move after a three-hour meeting at the premier’s office.
“Israel will soon begin constructing two sections of the fence” following a plan presented at the meeting by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, an Israeli official told reporters on condition of anonymity. The first section will be near the southern Red Sea resort town of Eilat and the second near the area of Nitzana in the center of the 250-kilometer desert border.
Hamas group scored a marked rise in popularity in Gaza after its forces tore down sections of the border wall with Egypt, but the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held on to its lead, according to an independent Palestinian poll published yesterday.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research said a survey it carried out between Jan. 23 and Feb. 3 showed a 6-point rise in support for Hamas, to 39 percent compared to 33 percent in a poll carried out in mid-December. The latest survey, which questioned 1,232 Gazans and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points, showed support for Fatah falling to 46 percent from December’s 52 percent.
