Israeli strike kills three militants in Gaza

12.00pm


GAZA - The Israeli army killed three Palestinian militants in a helicopter missile strike in Gaza City on Saturday and wounded some 15 bystanders, witnesses said.

The last Israeli missile strike was three weeks ago, when an Islamic Jihad leader and a Palestinian boy were killed in Gaza City.

Witnesses identified the dead on Saturday as Mahmoud Jouda, a senior commander of Islamic Jihad's military wing, and cousins Ayman and Amin Dahduh, lower-ranking members of the group.

Palestinian medics said 15 civilian bystanders, including children, were wounded in the attack.

An Israeli army spokesman said the target of the strike was a vehicle carrying senior members of the Islamic Jihad who, he said, were responsible for planning several deadly attacks against Israeli civilian and army targets.

Inside the hospital, hundreds of militants from Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, shouted "Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest)" and "Revenge, revenge."

"The resistance will continue and the reaction of the resistance to the crime will continue and the crime will never defeat ... the Islamic Jihad," said Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad member in Gaza.

An Israeli couple was shot dead on Friday in their car on the West Bank border and two Palestinian gunmen on Thursday killed an Israeli soldier at the Erez border crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Both Palestinian gunmen were killed in Thursday's incident. Al-Aqsa claimed responsibility for both attacks.

"We condemn with the strongest possible terms this Israeli crime of assassination and targeting very crowded civilian areas," said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat.

In the West Bank, members of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, one of the group's highest decision-making bodies, met for the first time in three years and called for a cessation of violence on both sides and condemned suicide attacks inside Israel.

The meeting was a bid to head off a slide into chaos signaled by mass resignations, alleged corruption by Fatah's ruling old guard and its faltering control over Fatah militants.

- REUTERS