Israeli troops rolled into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun early yesterday, sparking heavy fighting with local militants and killing at least seven Palestinians, most of them when a tank shell hit a house, medical officials said.
A mother and her four children were killed when the tank shell hit the house, an official at the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry said.
Palestinian medics identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Mo’tiq, ages 6 and 3; and their brothers, Saleh, 4, and Mousab, 15 months.
Witnesses said the shell was aimed at an Islamic Jihad militant, who had just launched an anti-tank missile at the Israeli troops and was killed too.
The mother of the Abu Mo’tiq family was initially critically injured and in a state of clinical death, but died of her wounds in hospital shortly afterwards.
A Hamas gunman was also killed by a missile fired by an Israeli helicopter gunship providing cover for the ground troops.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army entered the town, near Gaza’s northern border with Israel, because it was a “very central rocket launching area.”
Hundreds of locally-made Qassam, al-Quds and Nasser rockets have been fired from Beit Hanoun and its surroundings at Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.
Militants from the area also launched attacks at Israeli soldiers patrolling the border, and snipers have opened fire at Israeli farmers working on the Israeli side of the border fence, she said.
The military said it was checking the reports that civilians were killed in the tank shelling.
But the spokeswoman said that “when militants are acting from within a populated area, they take on themselves the risk that civilians will be hurt too. We of course do not aim at civilians.”
She said the operation in Beit Hanoun was continuing.
Beit Hanoun farmer Omar Abdel Nabi said he was driving his tractor in a nearby field when two or three explosions shook the ground.
“People were screaming that a tank shell landed in the next street,” he told reporters. “I carried two people covered in blood out of a house.”
The children were taken to a local hospital morgue, where distraught family members and medics stood over the bodies, wailing and flailing their hands in the air.
In recent weeks, militants have tried to infiltrate the border at least four times. They say the operations are a response to Israel’s economic blockade of Gaza. Israel has sealed Gaza’s borders since the Hamas takeover, greatly restricting the flow of fuel, cement and other basic goods into the area and worsening the hardship in the already impoverished area.
Egypt, which borders Gaza’s south, has been trying to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Last week, the Islamic militant group said it would agree to a six-month truce with Israel. The Israelis have dismissed the offer, saying Hamas will use the lull to rearm. Officials also reportedly say Hamas must control smaller and even more radical armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad, for a ceasefire to work.
While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has been conducting peace talks with the rival Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. The sides hope to reach a peace deal by the end of the year, though Abbas complained after a trip to the White House last week that he was growing pessimistic about the lack of progress in negotiations.
Early on Monday, the Israeli army lifted a blanket closure of the West Bank and Gaza it had imposed for 10 days over the Jewish Passover holiday.
The lockdown, imposed on April 18, barred Palestinians from entering Israel. Israel routinely seals the Palestinian territories during Jewish holidays, seen as a time of high risk of attack as Jews gather in public places for prayer and celebration.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS