GAZA CITY, 11 July 2004 — Four Palestinians, including three militants, were killed when their car exploded in the central Gaza Strip yesterday in a blast that Palestinian security officials blamed on Israel. But Israeli military sources denied the car blew up as a result of a helicopter missile strike, tank attack or any other military action.
Three of the dead were militants from the Popular Resistance Committees who were in the car during the blast, medics said. The fourth was a motorcyclist who was driving past at the time of the explosion near the central Gaza Jewish settlement of Netzarim.
The explosion ripped through the car turning it into a pile of smoking wreckage and scattering body parts and metal pieces across Gaza’s coastal road.
Palestinian security officials at first said the explosion was the result of an Israeli helicopter missile attack on a black Mercedes-Benz traveling on Gaza’s coastal road towards Gaza City. But they later said it was caused by tank shells.
Palestinian witnesses said they saw helicopters flying overhead before the explosion. Israeli helicopters frequently fly over the Gaza Strip. Israeli helicopter gunships have carried out numerous strikes against militants’ cars in Gaza. There have also been numerous incidents when explosives detonated prematurely while being transported.
A spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, meanwhile, said the car was booby trapped and the bomb detonated by remote-control from an Israeli helicopter overhead.
Meanwhile, Arab states and Iran hailed yesterday the world court’s ruling against Israel wall in the West Bank as historic, calling for action to ensure the wall is torn down. The International Court of Justice ruled Friday that the 700-kilometre wall violates international law and that those parts that encroach on Palestinian territory should be dismantled.
Outgoing Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said Cairo “hopes that the international community will assume its responsibilities, through UN mechanisms, and would implement the ICJ recommendations.
“The ICJ resolution considering the Israeli barrier illegal and contrary to international law confirms ... that such Israeli acts against the Palestinian people should cease immediately,” he told reporters.
The Syrian official newspaper Ath-Thawra said the Israeli reaction to the ICJ decision “condemning the apartheid wall proves again that Israel scoffs at the United nations and international laws.” Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said: “Just as it was opposed by the US judge among the 15 judges making up the ICJ, the decision will be met with an opposition from the United States when put before the United Nations.
“The Arabs have to unite among themselves and back the resistance of the Palestinian people, because if we don’t, then we will only have the (ICJ) decision and Israel would keep the wall,” he told reporters in Beirut.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi hailed the ICJ ruling which he said “signifies the international community’s opposition to the expansionistic and racist policies of the Zionist regime.”
It “has to be used as an effective international device to prevent recurring violations of Palestinians’ rights,” he told the state IRNA news agency in Tehran. Asefi also condemned Israel’s vow to ignore the ruling. He said that by “relying on America’s full support, the Zionist regime is mocking the international community.”
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance group said that Palestinian resistance and not an international court ruling is the way to destroy the wall. “Some might be pleased by this decision but it has no real or effective value,” Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said on Friday night.
