GAZA CITY, Dec 20: Israeli forces killed one Palestinian and wounded three others in an air raid on the Gaza Strip on Saturday, a day after the end of a shaky six-month truce, medical sources and witnesses said.
The attack amid UN and US calls for calm took place near the northern town of Jabalya when a warplane fired three missiles at militants preparing to launch rockets at Israel, witnesses said.
Ali Hijazi, 24, a member of the Palestinian Authority’s security services, was killed. Of the three wounded, two are in a critical condition, Muawiya Hassanein, head of the Palestinian health ministry’s emergency services, said.
Three of the men belonged to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah faction, witnesses said, adding that a civilian was also hurt.
Al-Aqsa identified Hijazi as its local commander and said the dead man, who was to have been married on Sunday, was responsible for handling rocket attacks on Israel.
“We won’t delay our response to this assassination. All options are open and the reaction will come from all Palestinian groups,” Abu Thaer, the brigades’ spokesman, told AFP.
Many among the thousand or so Palestinians in the funeral procession on Saturday demanded “vengeance”, calling for “suicide attacks”. Hijazi’s fiancee Sabrin, in her house in the Jabalya refugee camp, told AFP: “I hope God will avenge him”.
An Israeli army spokesman said the air strike was launched after two rockets were fired into southern Israel without causing any casualties.
The Islamic Jihad movement claimed responsibility for firing one of the rockets, while the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said it fired six mortar rounds at Israel.
“It is the first time we have fired on Israel since the end of the truce,” it said in a statement.
“We issue a warning to the Zionist enemy: all attacks against the Gaza Strip or any new crime will trigger a large-scale confrontation and we will retaliate very fiercely,” Ezzedine al-Qassam had said on Friday.—AFP