Israeli assault helicopters fired missiles at a Palestinian police station and a factory in the south of the Gaza Strip overnight, following another day of deadly violence, Palestinian security officials said early on Friday.
Three Apache helicopters fired five missiles at the metal foundry in Khan Yunes, a Palestinian town in southern Gaza, the sources said.
A police station near the factory was damaged in the attack, in which one person was wounded.
An Israeli military representative confirmed the raid which he said was aimed at a ”factory making weapons.”
The attack followed a day of violence in which two Israeli soldiers were killed and four wounded in the Gaza Strip. Two Palestinian were also killed in incidents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Earlier in the day a massive bomb attack was narrowly averted when Israeli police discovered a car loaded with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, although Palestinian militants did succeed in blowing up an Israeli tank in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile Marwan Barghuti, the top Palestinian to be tried by Israel since the beginning of the intifada, rejected Israel’s right to try him on terrorism charges in an uproarious court session.
Barghuti, the West Bank leader of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the Tel Aviv district court on the grounds he is an elected member of parliament and rejected the indictment read to him.
”I am a freedom fighter, I am a member of parliament,”
said the 43-year-old Barghuti, who has become a hero of the intifada for Palestinians and was once tapped as a successor to Arafat.
But he was interrupted by a cry from the father of one of the people killed in an attack Barghuti allegedly commanded: ”Freedom fighters are supposed to attack soldiers, but you murdered my son.”
The court case continued to the backdrop of the ever rising death toll from 23 months of Palestinian uprising.
An Israeli soldier was killed and three others wounded when their tank ran over a powerful explosive charge in the southern Gaza Strip, the army said in a statement.
The blast occurred near the central Kissufim crossing point, on a track used by units patrolling the security fence that seals the narrow Gaza Strip off from Israel, and was claimed by the Popular Resistance Committees, which is made up of former members of all the various factions who have put ideological differences aside to focus on military aspects of the conflict.
Also on Thursday, a militant of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was killed in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.
He was gunned down after shooting and injuring two Israeli soldiers near the northern Jewish settlement of Nitzanit. One of the soldiers later died of his injuries.
And in the northern West Bank village of Anbata, residents said a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel was shot dead.
The man, aged 35 and who had been released by the Palestinian Authority from prison in Jericho three days before, was struck down by three bullets fired by his assailants who raced off in their car, the residents said.
It was not clear why he had been freed from prison. It was the fifth killing of a suspected collaborator in less than two weeks.
Israeli tanks also staged two incursions in the Gaza Strip, moving into autonomous territory in Deir al-Balah while the army destroyed four houses in the southern town of Rafah and arrested three Palestinians there.
A day after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he saw for the first time an opportunity for a political agreement with the Palestinians, violence also flared elsewhere in the West Bank, occupied by Israel for 10 weeks.
Three Palestinians were wounded, one critically, in clashes which erupted in the northern West Bank city of Jenin when Israeli troops tried to arrest wanted militants, Palestinian medical sources.
Eight more suspected militants, six of them from the radical Islamic group Hamas, were arrested in and around the northern West Bank city of Nablus Thursday, in an operation which saw an Israeli helicopter open fire on a nearby Greek Orthodox convent.
But as the army continued its systematic sweep for militants in a bid to foil attacks inside Israel, the one-month-old respite was once again proved precarious as troops intercepted a car filled with 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds) of explosives in northern Israel.
The police blew up the device and launched a manhunt. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres later told reporters that if the bomb had gone off, it ”would have changed the whole situation overnight.” – Sapa-AFP