GAZA CITY, July 17: Israel bombed the foreign ministry in Gaza on Monday for the second time in a week, demolishing the building and tightening the noose on the Hamas government three weeks after the capture of a soldier.
With Israel showing no let-up in its deadly offensive, launched with the twin aims of retrieving 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit and stopping Palestinian rocket fire, a civilian was killed by tank fire in Beit Hanun.
Israeli troops have been operating for the past two days in the northern town, where three gunmen were wounded in attacks on Monday and others managed to fire six rockets into southern Israel in retaliation.
Operation Summer Rain has now left 85 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead, with Israel opening a second front, waging six days of war in Lebanon after Hezbollah captured another two soldiers last week.
Israel confirmed the overnight attack on the foreign ministry, accusing minister Mahmud al-Zahar, a leading member of Hamas, whose armed wing was jointly responsible for Shalit’s abduction, of planning ‘terrorist attacks’.
Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya said Israeli attacks on ministries ‘prove these actions are to paralyse the work of the Palestinian government and to destroy the foundations of the Palestinian political system’.
An F-16 jet dropped a missile on the building, which had already been badly damaged in a raid on Thursday, pancaking the five-storey ministry and causing extensive damage to the neighbouring planning and finance ministries.
“It was headed by Mahmud al-Zahar, a senior member of Hamas involved in the planning of terror attacks and general activity of the Hamas terror organisation,” an Israeli spokesman said.
Three residents of nearby houses were also wounded in the aerial attack, medical and security sources said. Israel has already bombed the Gaza offices of Haniya and those of his interior minister Siad Siam this month.
Ground troops have also rounded up a third of the Hamas cabinet in the occupied West Bank, although one of the ministers has since been released.
Other overnight air strikes targeted a security post used by a special Hamas paramilitary force in the refugee camp of Jabaliya and wounded two gunmen in an attack on a group of militants in Beit Hanun, security sources said.
A 20-year-old resident was killed and a Palestinian man from an armed group that fired on the Israelis was left seriously wounded when an Israeli tank opened fire in Beit Hanun, a medical source said.
Tanks, armoured vehicles and bulldozers rolled into Beit Hanun early on Sunday, in the deepest Israeli incursion into the area since Israel began its punishing offensive on June 28 — three days after Shalit was seized.
Mr Haniya also likened Israel’s incursion in Beit Hanun ‘to what is happening in Beirut, and in all the villages, towns and refugee camps in Lebanon’.
“The Israeli army controls nearly 80 per cent of the town,” said Sofian Hamed, director general of the Hamas-run Beit Hanun municipality, saying that tanks and bulldozers were in the centre and snipers positioned on roofs.
Mr Hamed said infrastructure, orchards, the electricity network, water and sewage systems had been damaged in the incursion. Aid groups have expressed concern about the difficulties of providing assistance to 1.4 million people living in Gaza following months of financial crisis and the suspension of western aid.
