Israeli soldiers on Saturday shot and killed a Hamas militant who the military said was responsible for a rocket attack that killed two Israeli preschoolers last week and triggered an army offensive in northern Gaza.
Abed Nabhan, 25, was one of five Palestinians killed Saturday in the ongoing Israeli operation in northern Gaza.
PHOTO: AP
After the deadly rocket attack on the Israeli border down of Sderot on Sept. 29, the Israeli army launched the largest incursion into northern Gaza since Israeli-Palestinian fighting broke out again four years ago.
About 2,000 troops and hun-dreds of army vehicles invaded a 9km strip of northern Gaza in an effort to force Palestinians out of rocket range of Israeli towns.
The army said Nabhan was responsible for the Sderot attack as well as a Sept. 30 attack on an army post in northern Gaza that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded two others.
Nabhan and three other Hamas gunmen were preparing to fire an anti-tank missile Saturday at Israeli troops in Jebaliya when the army fired at them. The shots set off an explosion, killing Nabhan and wounding the other gunmen, the army said.
Early yesterday, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a home in a Hamas stronghold in the Jebaliya refugee camp, killing a 38-year-old Palestinian civilian, hospital officials said. Eight others, including a girl, were seriously wounded in the missile strike.
The army targeted a house, causing extensive damage to homes and stores nearby, witnesses said. It was not immediately clear why the army targeted the house.
Late Saturday, two Israeli aircraft fired missiles toward Palestinians in separate incidents in Jebaliya. A strike near a public market wounded four Palestinians, hospital officials and witnesses said. Two were in critical condition and two bystanders were wounded, hospital officials said. A second strike seriously wounded two others, hospital officials said.
The deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed to 96 since Israel began its offensive in northern Gaza. Almost half of those killed in the raid were civilians, 18 were age 16 and under.
Five Israeli tanks, two bulldozers and two jeeps moved into the village of Orabia east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and used loudspeakers to call on residents to leave their houses so they could be demolished.
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