Over the past 24 hours, the Israeli airforce has shot missiles at a number of targets in the Gaza Strip, killing seven Palestinians, including five Hamas fighters and another belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement’s armed wing, the Saraya Al-Quds brigades.
Medical sources confirmed that seven Palestinians have been killed by the missile strikes.
Among those killed was school teacher Hani Na’eem , who died right after an Israeli missile targeted the agriculture school of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip, the sources pointed out.
The sources said that five other people at the school were wounded in today’s early Israeli air strike on northern Gaza, where Palestinian resistance fighters are said to have been firing homemade shells onto nearby Israeli areas over the last few years. Among those injured were three children.
Medics identified three of those killed as residents of the Jabalya refugee camp.
In central Gaza, Israeli planes shot a missile targeting a metal workshop in the Nuseirat refugee camp, causing slight wounds to a local woman, while a second missile landed on the Nuseirat coastal road, injuring a man and his son.
The intense Israeli attacks on the coastal territory, said to be targeting the ruling Hamas movement, have come immediately following the group’s claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in a mall in southern Israel last week.
The attack left one old woman dead and eleven others injured.
Today’s Israeli attacks brought the death toll among Palestinians above 15 for this week.
In the meantime, Hamas announced that the Dimona ‘martyrdom operation’ was a natural response to the continued Israeli army attacks on Gaza’s 1.5 million population, as well as the closure of Gaza and the strict control of the West Bank, where Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas holds sway.
Asked by the IMEMC, whether the attack in Dimona, the first in more than a year, would leave an impact on overall Palestinian politics, Abu Zuhri responded, ‘our resistance against the occupation is meant to keep the harm our Palestinian people suffer from far away ‘.
‘Hamas is committed to the legitimacy of its resistance against the occupation’s crimes and siege,’ he added.
Last June, Israel imposed a strict closure on the Gaza Strip after the Islamist Hamas movement took over the region amidst a power struggle with the Fatah party of Abbas.
Since Hamas was elected in Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 2006, the democratically-elected party has been isolated by Israel and the international community due to the group’s resistance strategy.
Updated from
11: 18 Israeli attacks on Gaza leave 7 dead and at least five injured
By: Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News
Seven Palestinians were killed and five injured during several air strikes and a ground invasion conducted by the Israeli army in the northern part of the Gaza strip on Thursday morning.
A teacher was killed and five other civilians were injured when Israeli tanks stationed on the northern Gaza-Israeli borders shelled an agricultural college located in the town of Beit Hanoun. Medical sources identified the teacher as Hanni Na’eem.
The sources added that among the five injured, three were children.
Five resistance fighters from the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, were killed when Israeli jet fighters targeted them during three separate attacks on Thursday at dawn.
In a press statement, the Al Qassam group announced that Hamoudah Al Sharaafa, 45, and Ahmad Abu Hameed, 25, were killed when an unmanned Israeli aeroplane shot a missile at them in the northern part of Gaza City.
Furthermore, the groups added that Mohamed Al Moutawaq, 24, and Sa’ed Nabhaan, 24, were killed when Israeli jet fighters shelled a Qassam Brigades position located in Jabalya in the eastern part of the Gaza strip.
Also in Jabalya, Osama Assaf, 23, was killed during clashes with invading Israeli troops, the Al Qassam statement revealed.
The Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, said that Jawudat Nabhan, a fighter for the group, was killed during Israeli shelling to Beit Hanoun on Thursday at dawn.
