GAZA CITY/RAMALLAH, 6 June 2008 — An Israeli missile aimed at a group of activists struck a house in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday and killed a 4-year-old Palestinian girl, Palestinian officials said, hours after an Israeli was killed by a Hamas mortar barrage fired from the area.
The sudden spike in violence dealt a new setback to Egyptian efforts to mediate a truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers and raised the likelihood of a tough Israeli military reprisal. The Palestinian girl was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli Army confirmed the aerial attack and said it had hit a “gunman.” But Hamas security officials said the missile missed a group of activists and struck a nearby house. The girl, who was playing outside, was killed and her mother was wounded, said Dr. Moaiya Hassanain of the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The airstrike came shortly after Gaza’s Hamas rulers claimed responsibility for the deadly mortar attack in southern Israel. The mortar shells were fired from the same area targeted in the airstrike, the army said. Israeli government spokesman David Baker said Hamas “will be held accountable” for the mortar attack.
Israeli defense officials were set to discuss a response at a meeting Sunday after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert returns from the US. The Israeli Army said the mortar shells landed near a factory in the Nir Oz communal farm. Israel’s national rescue service, Magen David Adom, said that in addition to the death, one person was in serious condition and two others were moderately wounded.
Hamas, the Islamic group that has ruled Gaza for the past year, said it had fired three mortar shells “as a response to the nonstop aggression against our people.” Israel frequently conducts airstrikes and ground incursions in the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rocket and mortar fire.
Olmert is expected to convene his Security Cabinet, a gathering of senior government ministers and defense officials, on Sunday to discuss the ongoing violence in Gaza, Israeli defense officials said. The officials said the Security Cabinet would consider voting on the cease-fire proposal, or alternatively discuss whether to step up military action in Gaza.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines, said most members of the Security Cabinet oppose the cease-fire at the current time. While Israel battles Hamas in Gaza, it has been conducting peace talks with the rival Palestinian government of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank. Abbas expelled Hamas from the Palestinian government after Hamas violently seized control of Gaza in June 2007.
Abbas has refused to speak to the group until it cedes control of Gaza. But in an apparent about-face, Abbas called Wednesday for new dialogue with Hamas. Hamas’ prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, welcomed the gesture. “We have to encourage the people. We have to dry their wounds. We have to clean their tears and to heal their pain,” he said in a speech in Gaza City yesterday.
Palestinian sources also said a man was shot dead yesterday by Israeli soldiers who intervened in clashes between rival clans near the West Bank city of Hebron. Israeli security sources said that soldiers came upon a group of armed Palestinians in the Jabal Juhar area, opened fire in their direction and identified a hit.
According to the Palestinians, during clashes that erupted between members of the Rajabi and Ajlouni clans, Israeli soldiers that arrived at the scene opened fire at an armed Palestinian from the Ajlouni clan and killed him on the spot. Palestinian medical sources in the Al-Ahli hospital in Hebron said 22-year-old Adham Majed Al-Rajabi was dead on arrival at hospital.
—With input from agencies
