GAZA CITY, 12 August 2006 — Israel continued its war against Palestinians yesterday by demolishing more houses in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli warplanes targeted two houses — one in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, and the other in eastern Gaza City.
An Israeli air raid yesterday destroyed the house of a Palestinian fighter in the northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said the three-story building located in the Jabaliya refugee camp was completely destroyed.
A child was injured in the attack, witnesses said.
The building was owned by Naim Abu Al-Foul, a member of the Palestinian Resistance Committees, witnesses added.
“We attacked a site used by the Palestinian Resistance Committees to manufacture and store weapons material,” an Israeli Army spokesman said. “Prior to the attack, residents of the area were told to leave for their personal safety,” the spokesman added.
The Israeli Army has started to make phone calls to Palestinian civilians and fighters whose houses would be targeted. Tens of Palestinians received such phone calls.
In the other raid, Israeli warplanes fired one missile toward a house in Al-Montar area in eastern Gaza City. Witnesses and security sources said that the two-story house owned by Younis Mohasin, a security personnel, was destroyed. Damage was caused to nearby houses as well.
Mohasin was informed by the Israeli Army to leave the house before it was attacked. The airstrikes were part of a wider offensive launched by Israel after Palestinian gunmen captured a soldier in a cross-border raid on June 25.
Israel has rejected demands by the three groups, which include Hamas, that the captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit be traded for Palestinian prisoners.
But Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas told reporters after Friday prayers that he hoped a deal over Shalit could be reached soon, although he offered no details.
“We have said more than once that the issue of the soldier should be resolved politically, diplomatically and through negotiations on a humanitarian and political basis that takes into consideration the suffering of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in the occupation jails,” Haniyeh said.
Meanwhile, the border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt opened yesterday for a second straight day for humanitarian cases, after weeks of closure, but was shut early again, officials said. The Rafah crossing — Gaza’s only gateway to the world that bypasses Israel — was open for less than three hours and shut at 12.15 p.m., nearly eight hours earlier than scheduled, after some 1,200 people had crossed into Egypt.
“There were too many people. The situation was difficult to control,” a spokeswoman for the European Union Border Assistance Mission said, explaining the early closure.
Meanwhile, the Saudi Shoura Council yesterday condemned the Israeli military aggression on Lebanon and Palestine.
It also denounced the kidnapping of Palestinian Speaker Aziz Dweik at the hands of Israeli forces as well as the arrest of Palestinian parliamentarians and called for their quick release.
— With input from agencies
