Israeli air strike kills Jihad leader, 3 others: Intelligence chief wounded in blast
GAZA, May 20: An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed four Palestinians, including a top Islamic Jihad militant, on Saturday, prompting calls of revenge by the armed group to continue targeting Israel in rocket attacks.
The missile strike occurred hours after Palestinian General Intelligence chief Tareq Abu Rajab was brought to Israel to treat wounds sustained in an explosion in an elevator at his Gaza Strip headquarters.
His ally, President Mahmoud Abbas, called the blast, which killed one of Abu Rajab’s aides and wounded 10 people, an assassination bid.
If confirmed as a targeted attack, it would mark the highest-profile internal assassination attempt in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and could worsen enflamed tensions between loyalists of Mr Abbas’s Fatah group and Hamas supporters. The Hamas-led government, formed after the militant group beat Fatah in a January parliamentary election and which is shunned by Washington and other world powers because of its vow to destroy Israel, said an investigation would be launched.
Saturday’s missile strike, which medics said also killed a boy and his mother and grandmother, was the latest such attack since April, when an Israeli air strike killed an Islamic Jihad militant after a deadly suicide bombing by the group in Israel.
The militant, Mohammad al Dahdouh, was a senior Islamic Jihad commander responsible for recent firings of advanced Russian-made rockets into Israel, a spokesman for the group and the Israeli army said.
Islamic Jihad has masterminded dozens of anti-Israeli attacks since a Palestinian uprising began in 2000 and killed 11 people in the Jewish state last month in a suicide bombing.
“The Zionist enemy should hurry to evacuate the settlers from (the Israeli city of) Ashkelon because our developed rockets ... will hunt them day and night,” said Islamic Jihad spokesman Abu Ahmed.
INTERNAL VIOLENCE: Clashes erupted in Gaza earlier between Fatah and Hamas supporters after the blast at Abu Rajab’s headquarters.
He was taking an elevator surrounded by a phalanx of bodyguards and aides when it exploded, apparently when a bomb planted in the lift shaft was detonated, security sources said.
He was taken at Mr Abbas’s request to an Israeli hospital, where a spokeswoman said he sustained many intense injuries and was on a respirator. Palestinians have often been brought to Israel for medical treatment due to better equipment.—Reuters
