POPPING POPPIES Israel kills two Palestinian teens
TENSION RISES: FOUR ISRAELI SOLDIERS HURT IN BLAST
Netanyahu promises to respond ‘appropriately’ after device explodes.
Gaza City, Palestinian Territories
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said yesterday, as tensions rose after an apparent bomb attack that wounded several Israeli soldiers on the enclave’s border.
The explosion on Saturday and ensuing Israeli air strikes marked one of the most serious escalations in the Hamas-ruled territory since the Islamist movement and Israel fought a war in 2014.
Israel’s army said it attacked “18 terror targets belonging to the Hamas terror organisation” in two waves of air strikes.
“Eight targets were attacked in a military compound near Deir el Balah, which belongs to the Hamas terror organisation, including weapon-manufacturing and training infrastructures,” it said in a statement.
Earlier the army said fighter jets had targeted “six military targets in Gaza belonging to Hamas, including a terror tunnel in the Zaytun area and military compounds near Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis”.
Two Palestinians were injured in air strikes which hit three bases belonging to Hamas in the east of the blockaded Gaza enclave, Palestinian sources said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called the border blast “very serious” and pledged to “respond appropriately”.
According to witnesses, the two dead Palestinians were shot by Israeli forces near the border on Saturday.
They were identified by the Gaza health ministry as Salam Sabah and Abdullah Abu Sheikha, both 17, who were killed east of Rafah in the south of the enclave. They were buried yesterday. The Israeli army said that its forces had fired warning shots at a number of Palestinians approaching the border fence “in a suspicious manner”.
Four Israeli soldiers were wounded, two severely, when an improvised explosive device blew up along the Gaza border fence, but none of their lives were in danger, the army said.
Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said a “rogue group” had claimed responsibility for the bomb blast, likely indicating one of the more radical Islamist groups who are present in Gaza.
But he insisted that “from our point of view Hamas is responsible”.
According to Conricus, Israeli soldiers saw a flag on a pole on the Gazan side of the border fence, with the device exploding when one of them grabbed it.
According to Palestinian security sources, the explosion took place east of the city of Khan Yunis. –