Nine killed in Israeli air strike
An Israeli air strike today against a car carrying militants in Gaza City killed nine Palestinians including two schoolchildren.
The Israeli military said the militants were on a mission to launch Katyusha rockets at southern Israel.
Palestinian witnesses said several missiles were fired, and one of them hit the car. A second missile came two minutes after an initial one, after a crowd had begun to gather around the scene of the attack, witnesses said.
Seven of the Palestinians killed were civilians, hospital officials said, and Islamic Jihad said the other two belonged to the ranks of its militant group. One of them was Hamoud Wadiya, Islamic Jihad’s top rocket launcher. The group identified the other militant as Shawki Sayklia.
Among the dead were two members of the same family, a father and son. Also killed were three medical employees on their way to tend to the wounded from an earlier explosion.
“What happened today is a brutal massacre committed against innocent civilians and fighters from our group,” said Kader Abib, an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza speaking to protesters outside a hospital morgue.
“The Zionist enemy insists on shedding Palestinian blood and we insist on going ahead with our Jihad and resistance. God willing the resistance groups ... will have a harsh response. All options are open for us.”
The Israeli army said the militants were on their way to fire Katyusha rockets at Israel, which if true could explain why stopping them was such a high priority. Katyushas have a longer range than the home-made rockets usually fired by Gaza militants, and have only recently appeared in the coastal strip.
Thirty-two Palestinians were injured in the strike, three of them seriously. Doctors at Gaza’s Shifa hospital found it difficult to work with the large number of casualties, and some were being treated on the bloodied floor.
At the scene of the air strike, scores of people surrounded a mangled yellow van that had been hit by a missile, its interior covered in twisted metal and the upholstery ripped off the foam seats. A man wailed beside the van as his peers propped him up by the arms. A white slipper lay in a pool of blood on the ground.
Ambulances screamed towards Shifa Hospital carrying dead and wounded. One medical worker yelled out “he’s dead” as teams removed a victim from the ambulance. At the hospital, the injured writhed in pain as medical teams bandaged wounds. Three blood-covered bodies lay on the hospital floor.
At the hospital’s morgue, where the bodies were taken, angry women shouted, “Death to Israel, Death to the occupation!”
Outside the morgue, an Islamic Jihad militant fired his rifle in a show of anger. Other gunmen vowed revenge. One went inside the morgue, put his hands on one of the dead bodies, and then smeared their blood on his rifle. Angry crowds burned tyres near the site where one Israeli missile hit.
After the airstrike, Palestinians reported to Palestinian security an explosion in the nearby town of Jebaliya, which later turned out to be a prank, Palestinian security said.
Israel-Palestinian violence has escalated since an explosion on a Gaza beach killed eight civilians on Friday.
Palestinians have blamed the deaths on an Israeli artillery round. Israeli military officials said that the military’s investigation showed the deaths likely were caused by a mine planted by militants from the Palestinians’ ruling Hamas party.
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