Hamas vows revenge after Israeli strikes on Gaza
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, July 31, AFP - Hamas vowed
revenge on Saturday after Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed a
senior militant and wounded eight other people.
The overnight Israeli raids came after a rocket fired from the strip
hit a southern Israeli city.
A Hamas militant was killed in an airstrike on a caravan near the
Magazhi refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian enclave, a Hamas
official said. The Israeli military said the site was "a
weapons-manufacturing warehouse."
In a statement on Saturday, the military wing of Hamas identified the
man as Issa Al-Batran, 40, and said he was a senior field commander.
"These new Zionist crimes will not pass without answer," the
statement said.
Aircraft also fired at least four missiles at buildings used by Hamas
security forces in Gaza City, wounding eight people, several of them
seriously, said Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.
The site targeted used to house the offices of Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas before his Western-backed Fatah party was ousted from Gaza
by the Islamist Hamas in 2007. Fearing further strikes, Hamas ordered
the evacuation of all its security offices, a security source told AFP.
Warplanes also hit smuggling tunnels on the border with Egypt without
causing casualties, witnesses said.
The Israeli military routinely responds after rocket attacks from
Gaza, and the army said in a statement that it "holds Hamas solely
responsible for terror emanating from the Gaza Strip." The airstrikes
came after a rocket fired by Gaza militants on Friday slammed into the
southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, causing no casualties but some
damage, and prompting sharp criticism from the United Nations.
The 122 mm Katyusha-type rocket landed next to a high-rise apartment
building, damaging parked cars and shattering windows, the military
said.
The United Nations condemned the attack, saying that "indiscriminate
rocket fire against civilians is completely unacceptable and constitutes
a terrorist attack."
The port city was frequently targeted by rocket fire from Hamas-run
Gaza before Israel launched its devastating three-week offensive on the
territory in December 2008.
Just over 100 rockets and mortar rounds have been fired from Gaza at
southern Israel so far this year, compared with a daily barrage before
the war, but most have not had the range to reach Ashkelon, 10
kilometres (six miles) north of Gaza.
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