Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City yesterday, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the second deadly air strike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week.
The militants had just fired a rocket toward Israel and returned to their car when they were hit, the Israeli military said. The pair was from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party. A third member of the rocket squad was seriously wounded.
On Friday, a missile strike killed five Hamas-linked militants and a seven-year-old boy in an attack on a militants' training camp southern Gaza. Fourteen people were wounded in the strike, and six remained hospitalized yesterday.
Abbas, meanwhile, said Hamas has begun to realize after just a week in power that it cannot govern without the world's recognition, but is still grappling with the international community's demands that it moderate its positions.
Hamas has sent conflicting messages in recent days. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has said that the Islamic militant group will not comply with demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace agreements.
However, Haniyeh has also said Abbas is free to negotiate with Israel, and others in the group have raised the possibility of accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
On Friday, the EU and the US announced they are halting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Haniyeh denounced the decisions as "blackmail," and said Hamas would not change its positions.
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