GAZA CITY: Two Palestinians were killed yesterday when Israeli warplanes carried out air strikes on smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.
Jihad Abu Jarad and Hamdan Al-Astal, both in their 20s, were killed in Rafah on the border with Egypt, and three other people were wounded in the strikes which targeted five tunnels, the sources said.
The air raids were the second in as many days to target smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s border with Egypt and came after Palestinians resistance fighters fired mortar rounds into Israel, an army spokesman said. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed it had fired three mortar bombs at an Israeli special forces patrol. Israeli police said two rounds hit an uninhabited area, without causing casualties or damage.
On Friday aircraft attacked two smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, a day after Palestinian fighters fired a rocket at Israel.
Rocket fire had dropped significantly since Egypt began efforts to consolidate the Jan. 18 truce that ended Israel’s 22-day offensive against Gaza’s fighters.
In another development, Israeli forces yesterday opened fire at Palestinian farmers near the security fence in southeast Gaza Strip and sent ground troops into the other end of the coastal territory, according to eyewitness accounts.
The farmers were working their land in the Faraheen area in the east of Khan Younis city in the southern Gaza Strip when they came under machine gun fire from the Israeli army posts on the border, the witnesses said.
According to security sources, another machine gun was fired from the border along in the northeast Gaza Strip, east of the town of Jabaliya.
There were no casualties in the two shooting incidents.
Meanwhile, three Israeli bulldozers, backed by two tanks, rolled for a few hundreds of meters into Beit Lahiya town, an agricultural community in the northern Gaza Strip. Residents said the bulldozers leveled some groves and withdrew later in the morning.
In political developments, the Hamas movement yesterday denied the resumption of Egypt’s efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and resistance groups in the Gaza Strip.
“There is nothing new regarding the lull,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, which controls Gaza.
His comments followed reports that Egypt had asked the Palestinian factions to study the possibility of reaching a new cease-fire with Israel.
— With input from agencies
