Twelve Palestinians, most of them fighters, were killed and at least 20 wounded in a series of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics said early yesterday.
The Israeli raids came as Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel starting on Friday morning, injuring four people, one seriously, Israeli military sources said.
One Israeli strike, on a car traveling in the Tel El-Hawa neighborhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.
The PRC threatened to retaliate for al-Qaisi’s death, and about 40 rockets and shells were subsequently fired on southern Israel in a series of attacks.
The al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said later that strikes had killed 10 of its members.
The PRC and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel on Friday.
The official Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted a statement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority condemning the Israeli retaliation, saying it had created a “negative environment” that would “escalate the circle of violence in the region.”
The Israeli military said al-Qaisi “was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed” a deadly cross-border attack into southern Israel from Egypt’s Sinai last August.
In that incident, gunmen carried out a coordinated series of shooting ambushes on buses and cars on Route 12, which runs along the Egyptian border 20km north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.
The shootings took place over several hours, leaving eight dead and more than 25 wounded.
The military statement said al-Qaisi was also involved in a 2008 attack on a terminal for pumping fuel from Israel into the Gaza Strip, in which two Israeli civilians were killed.
The statement added that both the dead men were “responsible for planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days.”
It said that other strikes were aimed at men about to fire rockets into Israel.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has maintained a tacit truce with Israel, but other armed Palestinian groups regularly fire rockets and mortars across the border, which can spark air strikes in response.
The relatively small PRC is one of the most active and it pledged to avenge its men’s deaths.
“We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this [Israeli] crime,” said Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the PRC’s military wing, the al-Nasser Salahadin Brigades.
Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, also warned of retribution.
“Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr leader Zohair al-Qaisi and martyr Mahmud Hanani and confirms that their blood will not be wasted, the enemy’s crime will be a curse on him,” it said in a statement.
Its political leaders were more restrained.
“The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime, it comes as a part of the destabilization of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip” the Hamas-run Gaza government’s interior ministry said in a statement.
“We hold the international community fully responsible for the attacks,” it said.
Before Friday’s airstrikes, Israeli army radio quoted what it called “senior military sources” as saying the army “does not intend to allow the firing to continue.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese