JABALIA (Gaza Strip) Nov 4: Israeli helicopters and ground-to-ground missiles blasted metal works and other plants in the Gaza Strip which the Israeli army said were being used as illegal arms factories before dawn Sunday.

The US-made Apache helicopters fired five missiles at two factories and two workshops in Jabalia, just north of Gaza City, followed by a salvo of around eight ground-to-ground missiles, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

Local resident Mohammed Abu Warda said a huge explosion split the night.

“It was a terrible sound. My kids were scared. We heard the sound of helicopters and after that rocketing. The ground-to-ground missiles came from the direction of Beit Hanun,” near the administrative boundary with Israel, Abu Warda said.

Riyad Mohammed Massood, 32, the owner of a carpentry shop that was hit in the strike, said: “I was sleeping when it happened at 4:30 in the morning. I heard the bombing, but I didn’t see it.

“I lost 9,000 dollars,” he added.

In his small workshop, light shone through a gaping hole in the concrete ceiling, while the cement floor was strewn with blackened machine tools and burned planks of wood.

“I came this morning and found my shop bombed out. I don’t know why. This is a carpentry workshop, it’s not related to any military activities. I only have wood. It’s burned and destroyed completely.”

But a group of people blocked an AFP reporter from entering an adjoining workshop which had also been hit.

The workshops were just 100 meters from the Abu Bakr Sadiq mosque in Jabalia, which residents described as the center for the Hamas Islamic resistance movement in the sprawling town just to the north of Gaza City.

Hassan Bassil also found his small factory for painting gas cylinders for cooking blown up by the night-time raid.

The aluminum roofing was blown away when a missile slammed through the factory, then through the steel-door entrance, and then the concrete wall of an office of the wood workshop opposite.

“It’s a civilian factory,” he said.

His co-owner father said the factory does not belong to any military group. “It’s private. It doesn’t belong to Hamas or Hezbollah,” he said, referring the Lebanese Muslim guerrilla movement.

The hail of missiles also hit an aluminum production plant, where the rockets destroyed heavy machinery like compressors and casting equipment and the tin roofs were blown away. —AFP