GAZA CITY, 22 May 2007 — Israel killed five more Palestinians yesterday and ratcheted up pressure on Hamas saying its leadership was in Israel’s crosshairs. Yesterday’s assassinations came after Sunday night’s attack on the house of Hamas lawmaker Khalil Al-Hayya that killed eight people including seven members of his family.
An Israeli woman was killed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot last night, the first casualty in a Palestinian rocket attack since November and is likely to stoke further Israeli anger at what Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called an “intolerable” situation.
“I don’t distinguish between those who carry out the (rocket) attacks and those who give the orders. I say we have to put them all in the crosshairs,” National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said on Israel Radio.
Thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets of Gaza City and men fired into the air, vowing revenge for the assassinations.
Hamas said only two of the eight people killed in Sunday’s attack were fighters. Hayya was not injured.
“We will keep to the same path until we win one of two goals: victory or martyrdom,” Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, said at the funeral service.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will go to Gaza today to speak to leaders about maintaining law and order, following weeks of internal fighting, and perhaps renewing a truce with Israel, Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr said.
Israeli aircraft carried out a series of attacks yesterday. At least four members of Islamic Jihad, on their way to launch rockets at Israel, were killed in an airstrike that destroyed their car near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, the group said. One man was killed in an earlier attack on what Israel called a rocket manufacturing facility and Palestinians described as a stonemason’s shop. The airstrikes also knocked out electricity to about 50,000 people.
Hamas’ armed wing cautioned its members yesterday against using cellular telephones and vehicles to avoid being tracked and targeted by Israeli forces.
“Do not use the Jawwal phones at all,” a Hamas spokesman, referring to a Palestinian cellular network, said in a radio message. “Do not get in groups. Do not use any kind of transportation at all because the planes of the Zionist enemy are in skies all the time,” he said.
— Additional input from agencies
