Israeli troops staged their first ground operation in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday since pulling out of the territory last year, killing three Islamic Jihad militants and a Palestinian police officer.
Three other militants were also killed in the occupied West Bank overnight, making it the deadliest spike in violence since the radical Islamist movement Hamas came to power in the Palestinian territories in March.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the deaths would only feed the cycle of violence, while Hamas Premier Ismail Haniya also condemned the ”massacres”.
Jihad said three fighters were killed in northern Gaza in an ambush by an Israeli special forces unit disguised in Palestinian clothing, as militants prepared to fire rockets across the border towards the city of Ashkelon.
The extremist faction, behind the last seven suicide attacks inside Israel, vowed to exact a ”terrible” revenge for the deaths, which brought the overall toll since the Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 to 5 074.
”This new crime of the occupation … will not pass without a terrible and violent response in the heart of the Zionist entity,” the group said in a statement.
Jihad said other members of its armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, were called to the scene and then became embroiled in a gun battle with Israeli troops for more than an hour.
Security sources said the fourth victim was a member of the Palestinian police, who appeared to have been caught up in the firing. Nine other people were wounded, including two journalists and an ambulance driver, medical sources said.
Since pulling troops out of Gaza after a 38-year presence last September, the Israeli military has sought to combat repeated rocket firing with air strikes and shelling by artillery posts and tanks parked next to the border.
However, the army confirmed that troops had re-entered the territory during the overnight operation and summoned air support.
”Early this morning, an IDF [Israel Defence Forces] force operating in the Gaza Strip identified a terror cell in the northern Gaza Strip attempting to launch projectile rockets at Israel,” a statement from the military said.
”The force, aided by the IAF [Israel Air Force], opened fire at the cell and an exchange of gunfire ensued as the terrorists fired back.”
Army chiefs have previously cautioned against sending troops back into Gaza, but Defence Minister Amir Peretz told a Cabinet meeting that all options would be considered as long as militants continued to fire missiles.
”We will continue our operations by air, sea and land in order to put an end to the rocket launching,” said Peretz.
In separate incidents in the northern West Bank, two members of another armed Palestinian faction, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, were killed while exchanging fire with Israeli forces at Kabatiya, near Tulkarem, and the Balata refugee camp in Nablus.
A third man, a member of the al-Quds Brigade, died during an Israeli incursion at Kabatiya.
Abbas, whose security forces have done little to prevent the rocket attacks from Gaza, called on the international community to intervene with Israel.
”The pursuit of political assassinations is a serious escalation that will only destabilise and worsen the situation in the region,” a statement from his office said.
The international community, particularly ”the American administration, should intervene immediately to put an end to these Israeli crimes against the Palestinians”, he added.
Haniya said at a Cabinet meeting in Gaza that the killings were part of a clear-cut Israeli strategy.
”In the name of the government and Palestinian people, we condemn the continuation of the Israeli policy of aggression against our people in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, whose massacres have cost the lives of four martyrs,” he told ministers. — AFP
