Six members of Al Qassam Brigades killed in Gaza explosion Hamas blames on Israel
Two Palestinians were killed after attempting to infiltrate Israel from the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian medical sources said, the latest incident of cross-border violence.
The Israeli army said its forces “fired towards three suspects who attempted to infiltrate Israel from the southern Gaza Strip and to damage security infrastructure”, killing two of the suspects.
A day earlier, six members of Hamas were killed in an explosion in the central Gaza Strip, which the military wing of Hamas blamed on Israel.
While Israel declined to comment on the explosion, it did confirm another strike yesterday, which it said was a reaction to kite-borne fire bombings.
Gaza’s health ministry confirmed six people were killed in Saturday’s explosion, with three others hurt in what residents said appeared to be an accidental explosion in the Zawayda area of the central Gaza Strip. The health ministry said the explosion may have been caused by the handling of explosives. In the past explosions in the Gaza Strip have resulted from the accidental detonation of explosive materials belonging to militant groups.
But a statement from the Palestinian group’s armed wing insisted that the incident was a “deplorable Zionist crime”.
The Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Gaza’s rulers, said the fatalities were members of their group and blamed Israel for the explosion, but did not provide details or proof.
The incident occurred during a “complex security and intelligence operation”, the group said, calling it a “serious and large security incident” and blaming the “Zionist enemy”.
The statement said it was a “serious crime against our fighters”.
Reuters television showed smoke rising above the village of Zawayda, far from the border where tensions have escalated in recent weeks.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on the incident, although a more junior official had earlier denied that the army was involved. Israel and the West designate Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
In a separate incident, Israel struck a facility belonging to the Hamas military wing overnight, with the military yesterday saying it was responding to fire bombings using kites.
With the new tactic Palestinians fly kites with incendiary devices attached across the Gaza border into Israel in an attempt to set farmers’ fields alight.
“Last night an aircraft struck a post belonging to the Hamas terror organisation adjacent to the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip,” a spokeswoman told AFP, without describing the target.
Hamas’s Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades military wing said it was at the border observation post and that nobody was injured in the attack.
“The strike was in response to an incident that took place yesterday in which terrorists launched burning incendiaries in an attempt to light fires in Israeli territory,” the Israeli spokeswoman said.
Israeli media have in recent days reported significant damage to farms caused by kiteflown Molotov cocktails, although the devices struggle to make it across the fence while staying alight.
The tit-for-tat attacks came after weeks of deadly protests and clashes along the border between Gaza and Israel.
At least 41 Palestinians have been killed since protests broke out on March 30, and thousands more have been injured. Israel claims the marches are being orchestrated by Hamas in an effort to provoke an Israeli response, thus justifying further attacks.