Israel Army Fires at Gaza Strip Militants, Injuring Two
Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were preparing to shoot an anti-tank missile at a patrol, an Israeli army spokeswoman said. Two people were injured, raising to 19 the number of Palestinians wounded in clashes over the past day, a Gaza official said.
Soldiers on the Israeli side of the Gaza border fence noticed Palestinians with a missile and shot, the Israeli spokeswoman said today in a phone interview, speaking anonymously according to regulation. Adham Abu Selmeya, chief of emergency services in Gaza, said two Palestinians were wounded. Israeli warplanes have hit seven targets in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip since yesterday, the army spokeswoman said. Seventeen people were injured in those strikes, Abu Selmeya said.
The current escalation began on March 19, when the military wing of the Islamic Hamas movement took responsibility for launching 50 mortar shells at southern Israel, injuring two Israeli civilians. Two Palestinians were killed that night, Selmeya said. The Israeli army said they were trying to penetrate the border fence. Of the 130 military projectiles launched at Israel from Gaza since the start of the year, 55 have been in the past four days, the army spokeswoman said.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle today criticized Israel’s strikes on Gaza “in the strongest terms,” telling reporters in Berlin that “a new spiral of violence must be prevented.”
Strike Gaza
The Hamas government yesterday urged its armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, not to give Israel a reason to strike Gaza. In December 2008, Israel launched a three-week offensive against Hamas in what it said was a bid to stop rocket fire. More than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in that conflict.
“Hamas isn’t interested in a large-scale escalation,” said Bashir Bashir, a political analyst at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He said the recent initiative by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to visit Gaza for reconciliation talks with Hamas may also be “exerting immense pressure” to keep the calm.
Abbas said on March 17 that he plans to visit Gaza in a bid to heal a near four-year divide with Hamas. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, ending a partnership government with Abbas’s Fatah after winning parliamentary elections the previous year.
Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the U.S.
To contact the reporters on this story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net; Saud Abu Ramadan in Jerusalem at sramadan@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net.
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