Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has ordered the Israeli army to step up air strikes and artillery fire on fields in the northern Gaza Strip from where militants have been firing rockets into southern Israel, Israeli media reported yesterday.
The aim was to create an unreachable "buffer zone" in the northern Gaza Strip, the reports quoted security sources as saying, by deterring militants from approaching the missile-launching site north of Gaza City.
An Israeli defense ministry spokeswoman confirmed that "among others, orders have been issued on the restriction of movement in those places from where the terrorist organizations are launching Qassams into Israel."
PHOTO: AP
She gave no further details, but media reports said the restrictions of movement would be enforced "from the air" and Palestinians would be prevented from entering the buffer zone depending on "security circumstances."
Among others, Palestinians would be prevented from accessing the former Jewish settlements of Dugit and Elei Sinai, which Israel evacuated last summer as part of its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Militants have been able to launch locally produced Qassam rockets deeper into Israel from the formerly off-limits settlements and twice hit an industrial zone south of the coastal city of Ashkelon this week for the first time in about two years.
Mofaz issued the orders in a meeting with army chiefs in Tel Aviv on Thursday night, convened after a Gaza-produced Qassam rocket hit an army base on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinians on Thursday in separate incidents in a new round of violence that also saw five Israeli soldiers wounded by Palestinian rocket fire.
Three of the Palestinians were militants shot dead in a gunfight during an early-morning Israeli army operation in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
They included Bashar Hanany, the local leader of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Amin a-Sheikh, his assistant.
The third was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah party.
The casualties came after Israeli soldiers surrounded a house in which the militants were hiding and an exchange of fire erupted.
The force arrived in the early morning and using megaphones called on the building's residents to leave.
Israeli military sources said the force shot the militants when they tried to escape from the house.
They said Hanany was responsible for a suicide bombing attack at a Tel Aviv market in November last year in which three people were killed and 40 wounded.
He was also behind other attempted attacks and was planning more in the future, the sources said.
Hours after the Nablus gunfight, Israeli artillery killed one Palestinian and injured another when pounding rocket-launching sites north of Gaza City.
The Palestinian killed was passing through a road in the area when hit in the shelling, witnesses said.
The artillery, stationed outside the northern Gaza Strip, fired at fields used by militants to launch missiles at Israel, after two such rockets hit areas near the southern Israeli port city of Ashkelon on Thursday morning.
Five Israeli soldiers, including a battalion commander and his deputy, needed treatment when one of the rockets hit a military base.
Israel, when pulling out the Gaza Strip earlier this year, said it would enforce a "zero-tolerance" policy for attacks launched form the strip.
However, the launching of home-made rockets form the strip at Israeli targets has become an almost daily event, and Israel retaliates by zeroing its artillery on the suspected launching sites.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS