Two Palestinians, said to be fighters, have been killed in a new fresh Israeli air strike on central Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening.
An Israeli drone hit a missile on a civilian car, on the Salah Ed Deen main road near the refugee camp of Buraij in central Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinians.
Palestinian medical sources confirmed that Mohammad aL-Safadi and Wael Ahel have been killed and a number of Palestinians have been wounded in the recent air strike.
The sources added that the injuries were described as moderate and that all injured residents were transferred to the central Gaza Strip hospital of Shuhada aL-Aqsa, for treatment.
Witness Hani Kharouf, a taxi driver, who was driving just behind the targeted car told IMEMC that the car was hit by one missile from the air.
‘ I was driving along the Salah Eldin main road, when a fire abruptly blazed in the a Beugot-type car , just few meters away from me. I suddenly stopped my car, it was so horrible as the hit car was divided into pieces as a pillar of fire was getting high in the sky’.
As of today three other Palestinians were killed in an earlier air strike on Gaza city, all of those killed were civilians including a child.
Israeli attacks on Gaza over the past twenty hours have claimed the lives of at least 25 Palestinians, many are fighters, and have left dozens injured.
Such attacks come on the heels of resumed Palestinian-Israeli peace talks on final status issues, initiated on Monday in west Jerusalem.
Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesperson of the ruling Hamas in Gaza, speaking to IMEMC, said that the recent attacks on Gaza came as a result of last week’s visit by U.S President Gorge Bush to the region.
‘ the Israeli occupation has a plan to destroy Hamas and its legitimacy, as the majority of those killed have been Hamas’s members. These attacks have been appproved by Gorge Bush, who gave the green light to Israel to destroy Hamas. This is based on the last November’s Annapolis meeting’
Barhoum maintained ‘We in Hamas do push forward unity among all Palestinian factions to resist the occupation and face this dangerous situation. We in Hamas are opposed to any peace talks for such talks are false. They always aim at granting security for the Israeli occupation, which gives nothing but takes everything’.
Israel has been stepping up attacks on the coastal territory since last September, when Israel declared the region a ‘hostile entity’.
Israel has also been imposing a strict closure on Gaza since June2007, when Hamas took over the coastal region amidst fighting with Fatah party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Israel claimed its actions are meant to stop homemade rockets fire, being launched by Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza, onto nearby Israeli towns.
The Islamist Hamas movement won the parliamentary elections of January 2006, and since then it has been going through Israeli-international isolation due to its resistance strategy against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
