GAZA CITY, 13 January 2008 — Unknown gunmen broke into the American international school in north Gaza before dawn yesterday for the second time in three days, smashed windows, burned buses and looted equipments.
Also in Gaza, a roadside bomb lightly injured two Hamas policemen, while medics found the body of another policeman who had been shot to death.
The attack on the American International School was the second in three days. On Thursday, hours before US president George W. Bush arrived in the West Bank, unidentified three gunmen broke into the school and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the second floor in it. No casualties were reported.
The head of the school, Rebhi Salem, told reporters that before dawn yesterday, unknown armed men stormed the school, destroyed properties, stole some computers and set six school buses and a car ablaze.
A statement signed by the “Army of Believers, Al-Qaeda in Palestine Organization” was left behind at the American International School after the attack during which five buses and a car were set ablaze, Salem said.
“Armed men entered the school in Beit Lahiya during the night and ransacked rooms as well as administration offices, and stole several computers,” Salem told reporters.
“Polytheists and enemies of Islam are pursuing each day their work to destroy our youths, who are falling by the dozens into the swamps of vice and moral decadence,” the statement found at the school said.
“That is why we must re-establish the truth and warn everyone who might try to corrupt our youths or try to open such places of corruption,” the statement added in apparent reference to the American International School.
Officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip have denounced the attacks and said an investigation has been launched. Ihab Al-Ghussein, the spokesman of Interior Ministry in the deposed government in Gaza condemned the attack and vowed to pursue the attackers, saying that, “this is a dangerous criminal act-this is not the way to express objection against Bush visit.”
A roadside bomb also injured tow Hamas police yesterday, Ghussein said. The bomb was detonated as a police patrol drove along the Salah Al-Deen main road in the central of the Gaza Strip.
