Commander killed
ISRAEL yesterday assassinated a senior militant commander in the Gaza Strip, the country’s forces claimed, triggering a fresh barrage of rockets on its cities.
Israel’s Shin Bet security service and the military said in a joint statement that warplanes struck and killed Hasam Abu Harbid, commander of the Northern Division of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in Gaza that has been fighting alongside Hamas in the recent escalation.
Abu Harbid “has consistently led rocket launches against Israel, as well as shooting attacks at soldiers”, the statement read, adding he was behind an attack last Monday in which an Israeli civilian was injured.
He was a commander in the Islamic Jihad for the past 15 years, according to the statement.
Shortly after the attack, a rocket barrage from Gaza was fired at southern Israel. One of the rockets hit a residential building in Ashdod city, causing damage and injuring three people, according to a statement by Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency health service.
According to a military notice yesterday, 3 150 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip towards the Israeli territory. About 460 of these rockets failed to reach Israel and fell within the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Iron Dome Air Defence System has intercepted about 90% of the rockets, the army said.
At least 200 people in the besieged Palestinian enclave were killed, including 59 children. In Israel, 10 people were killed, including a boy aged five and a soldier.
Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes continued to hammer the Gaza Strip yesterday despite international calls for de-escalation. Before dawn, in the space of just a few minutes, dozens of Israeli strikes bombarded the crowded coastal Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas, according to AFP journalists and the army.
Flames lit up the sky as intense explosions shook Gaza City, sparking power cuts and damaging hundreds of buildings, local authorities said. No casualties were immediately reported.
West Gaza resident Mad Abed Rabbo, 39, expressed “horror and fear” at the intensity of the onslaught.
“There have never been strikes of this magnitude,” he said.
Gaza resident Mani Qazaat said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “should realise we’re civilians, not fighters”. Israel’s army said that it hit the homes of nine “high-ranking” Hamas commanders, without providing details on casualties.
The overnight bombardment also included a third round of strikes on what the army calls the “Metro,” its term for a Hamas underground tunnel network. Fifty-four fighter jets pounded 15km of tunnels, which the army has previously acknowledged runs in part through civilian areas.
The renewed strikes come a day after 42 Palestinians in Gaza – including at least eight children and two doctors, according to the health ministry – were killed in the worst daily death toll since the bombardments began.
In total, 197 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including at least 58 children, and more than 1 200 wounded since Israel launched its air campaign against Hamas on May 10 after the group fired rockets, according to the authorities there.
Israel says 10 people have been killed and 294 wounded by rocket fire launched by armed groups in Gaza.
Netanyahu said in a televised address on Sunday that Israel’s “campaign against the terrorist organisations is continuing with full force” and would “take time” to finish.
Israeli air strikes also hit the home of Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s political wing in Gaza, the army said, without saying if he was killed.
On Saturday, Israel gave journalists from Al Jazeera and AP news agency an hour to evacuate their offices before launching air strikes.