GAZA/RAMALLAH, 28 February 2008 — Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and one in the West Bank during separate attacks yesterday. The dead included Hamas members, who had allegedly returned from military training in Syria or Iran.
Five members of Hamas’ Ezeddine Al-Qassam Brigades were killed when the van they were traveling in was attacked by Israeli warplanes near the southern town of Khan Younis, medical officials said. Local residents, who knew the men, reportedly said some of them had undergone training in Syria or Iran and returned home after Hamas breached the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt.
Egypt closed the border at Rafah about two weeks after the breach, but allowed Palestinians who had crossed into its territory to return.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military intelligence chief alleged that dozens of Gazans, who had gone “primarily to Syria but also to Iran for training in various areas of terror expertise,” had taken advantage of the open Rafah border to return home.
However, Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the Al-Qassam Brigades, denied the dead men had traveled outside the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, called the strike an Israeli “assassination” of senior members of the group’s armed wing and said the men had not been on an operation.
In another Israeli aerial raid yesterday morning, an Islamic Jihad activist was killed and two others were injured when an Israeli drone targeted two military sites east of the Burije refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, medics and Islamic Jihad sources said.
Nablus Attack
Undercover Israeli forces operating in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday killed a Palestinian and detained four others, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. The sources said that four Palestinians — belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, the military wing of Fatah — were wounded yesterday morning by undercover Israeli forces in Nablus. The four men were taken to an Israeli hospital for treatment, where one of the men, Ibrahim, died. A fifth unhurt member of the group was also taken in for questioning.
Israeli security sources said Israeli forces chased the five men and fired shots at them when they failed to halt. One of the men was armed with a handgun.
In response to the killing and arrests, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades said that the group was no longer committed to a truce it had made with Israel last year. Brig. Majed Faraj, chief of Palestinian Military Intelligence in the West Bank, blamed Israel for trying to disturb the stable security situation.
He added that the five Fatah members were committed to the terms of the truce agreement reached with Israel in the West Bank and that its actions yesterday were a clear breach of the agreement that had been reached by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority last July.
— With input from agencies
