8 killed as IAF bombs Gaza targets

By YAAKOV KATZ, JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP

IDF tanks and IAF warplanes attacked a series of targets throughout the Gaza Strip in anti-terror operations Thursday, killing at least eight Palestinians, including three civilians, and wounding more than 30 others, including five children and a 14-year-old boy who was in critical condition.

IDF troops kill Palestinian operatives in a pre-dawn anti-terror operation

Meanwhile, several Sderot residents were suffering form shock after three Kassam rockets fired from Gaza on Thursday landed in the western Negev town. One of the rockets landed near a residential building, causing its windows to smash.

In addition, ten mortar shells fired from southern Gaza landed in open fields near the Israeli border, no one was wounded and no damage was reported in the attack.

Earlier Thursday, a 122mm Grad Katyusha rocket fired from the northern Gaza Strip landed in northern Ashkelon. The rocket was launched from a distance of 16.5 kilometers and was the first projectile fired from the Strip to land so far north. It landed in a open area and did not cause any casualties or damage.

After the Katyusha attack, the IDF announced that it had targeted three buildings, one of them a weapons storehouse inside Gaza City and another a building belonging to a top Islamic Jihad operative in central Gaza. The third target was a building belonging to Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said.

Also during the IDF offensive, a tank shell struck the home of a terror operative in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, killing the man as well as his sister, mother and brother.

Soldiers returning from operations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Photo: AP

The army said troops had fired at gunmen who were shooting at them from houses.

Earlier, IDF forces, including 10 tanks, operating east of the town, skirmished with Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen, witnesses said.

When troops became trapped in one area, IAF aircraft fired at least nine missiles, the witnesses said. Two operatives were killed and nine were wounded in the air strikes, doctors said. During the effort to save the troops, tanks fired heavy machine guns, and three children were wounded, one critically, witnesses and doctors said. A Hamas gunman was also killed in the fighting, Palestinian officials reported.

The fighting came days before US President George W. Bush is scheduled to arrive in the region, and Palestinian officials said Israel's ongoing military activity in Gaza threatened to undermine the president's visit.

"We consider what's going on in Gaza ... as a bloody Israeli message in which Israel shirks itself of any commitment before the arrival of President Bush to the region," said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "They are killing the spirit of the Annapolis conference."

Israel said that the Katyusha rocket attack on Ashkelon marked an escalation that could not be tolerated.

"The Palestinians have attacked a major Israeli city ... and thus have upped the ante," government spokesman David Baker said. "Israel will not allow any cities to be attacked by Palestinian rocket fire."

Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, which are responsible for most of the rocket fire, claimed responsibility, pledging to strike even further into Israel. "We are going to launch more strikes in the depth of the entity," they said in a joint statement.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank on Thursday, the IDF raided the city of Nablus with at least 50 jeeps in its largest operation there in about four months. Palestinian security forces have deployed around the city of about 150,000 in recent weeks, trying to impose order in the community known for anti-Israeli activity.

In the IDF operation, troops imposed a curfew on Nablus's center, preventing most shops from opening and prompting most children to stay home from school, witnesses said. The army said soldiers were searching for terror suspects.

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