Hamas vows revenge over killings
Israeli forces infiltrated in a civilian car and opened fire on a group of men near the city of Khan Younis, killing one of our commanders. Hamas statement
GAZA CITY — A clash that erupted during an Israeli special forces operation in the Gaza Strip and killed eight people threatened on Monday to derail efforts to restore calm to the Palestinian enclave after months of unrest.
The dead from the incident late Sunday included an Israeli army officer and a local commander for Hamas’s armed wing.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut short a trip to Paris and rushed home as tensions rose.
Sirens rang out in southern Israel into the early hours of Monday after the clash, signalling rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Israel said it identified 17 launches towards its territory, three of which were intercepted by missile defences. It was not immediately clear where the others landed, but there were no injuries.
While the clash threatened to upset weeks of efforts to end unrest along the Gaza-Israel border, calm returned on Monday and Israel stressed its operation was an intelligence-gathering mission and “not an assassination or abduction.”
The statement from Israeli military spokesman Ronen Manelis signalled that the mission did not go as planned and resulted in the clash, which Palestinian security sources said included Israeli air strikes.
An Israeli ground operation to kill or abduct militants inside the Gaza Strip would be rare. Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the blockaded enclave, and its armed wing, spoke of a “cowardly Israeli attack” and an “assassination”, vowing revenge.
Hamas’s armed wing said an Israeli special forces team had infiltrated near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip in a civilian car. Israeli air strikes followed when the operation failed, it said in a statement. Israel’s military had not confirmed those details. Gaza’s health ministry said seven Palestinians were killed.
The dead included a local commander for Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, Five others were also Al Qassam members, while the seventh was a member of a separate militant alliance known as the Popular Resistance Committees, according to Gazan security sources.
Israel’s army confirmed one of its officers was killed and another was injured. “During an (Israeli) special forces operational activity in the Gaza Strip, an exchange of fire evolved,” the army said in a statement. —