A total of 10 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops early on Wednesday during a major incursion into the eastern part of Gaza City, while an 11th blew himself up, hospital sources said.
The 10, including brothers Ala and Said el-Ilou aged about 20 and a member of the security service, were killed in exchanges of fire. A suicide bomber belonging to the military wing of Hamas blew himself up beside an Israeli tank.
The bomber, Abdelkarim Bakroun (22) belonged to the military branch of Hamas, said Hamas leaders. The latest deaths brought the toll of almost 29 months of the Palestininian uprising to 2 972, including 2 222 Palestinians and 694 Israelis.
About 50 Israeli tanks along with two bulldozers and two helicopters penetrated about two kilometres into Sadjaiyeh in the eastern part of Gaza City late on Tuesday, Palestinian security officials said.
They said Israeli troops destroyed two metal workshops and a house, and searched several other houses as exchanges of fire took place with Palestinians. The soldiers also seriously damaged a school sponsored by Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Witnesses said the soldiers had started to withdraw.
The Israeli army representative said in a communiqué that the six-hour operation had been launched following the deaths of four Israeli soldiers on Saturday when their tank was blown up in the Gaza Strip.
He said that four workshops used to make mortars and rockets had been destroyed. During the operation the troops had sustained heavy fire from the Palestinians who used an anti-tank rocket and grenades. Three grenades had been thrown from the mosque but soldiers had not fired ”due to the religious nature of the building,” the representative said.
No soldiers had been hurt in the operation, he said, warning that ”the Israeli army will continue to act against the infrastructure of terrorism in the Gaza Strip.”
The Israeli army has in recent months destroyed many workshops, claiming the Palestinians used them to produce mortar shells or Qassam rockets that were fired into Israeli territory. Israeli troops have slain eight Hamas activists since Sunday, seven of them in the Gaza Strip. – Sapa-AFP