Israel strikes building in Gaza Strip
Israeli fighter jets deployed over the southern Gaza Strip, fired missiles at a building, destroying it and injuring about 10 Palestinians, witnesses and hospital officials said.
In the pandemonium that ensued yesterday, a Palestinian man on trial in Gaza for allegedly collaborating with Israel to kill Palestinians was shot and killed by militants, a judge said.
Separately, a Palestinian teenager was killed in the northern Gaza Strip after Israeli tanks moved into the area, Palestinians said.
And in the West Bank, Israeli troops killed a 24-year-old Palestinian who had tried to attack soldiers in their jeep, the army and witnesses said.
In the airstrike, three Israeli helicopters and two fighter planes were in the sky at the time the missile struck the three-storey building in Qarara, near the southern town of Khan Younis, witnesses said.
Military sources said a fighter jet had attacked the building because it served as a laboratory for making explosives recently used against its forces in Gaza. The building was also a meeting place for members of the militant Hamas group, an army statement said.
Residents said the building was empty at the time of the attack, but the flying debris injured about 10 people and destroyed the building.
Hamas member, Ahmed Abdel Wahab, had lived in the building until his death several months ago, residents said.
A relative, Yusef Abdel Wahab, is a member of Hamas’ military wing and had been living in the building. He left only moments before today’s strike and was not harmed, Israel’s Army Radio reported, citing Palestinians in the region.
The army statement mentioned Yusuf Abdel Wahab, saying he owned the building, ran the explosives laboratory and was wanted by Israeli forces.
The air strike followed Palestinian mortar attacks on Saturday night and yesterday morning at the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom. No one was hurt at the settlement, which is just a few miles from the scene of the air strike.
The Gaza Strip has been relatively quiet compared to the West Bank and it has been weeks since Israel deployed helicopters or fighter aircraft over the area.
Of the more than 70 suicide bombings against Israel in the past two years, all have come from the West Bank.
Palestinian militants have carried out periodic shooting and mortar attacks against Jewish settlers in Gaza.
After the airstrikes, members of the militant group Hamas shot and killed a Palestinian man who was on trial for allegedly collaborating with Israel in the killing of five Hamas members in southern Gaza last month, the court judge said.
Court proceedings for Abdel Hai Sababi, 48, had gone into recess and Sababi was in a detention room when the Israeli aircraft fired the missiles not far from the court, said Brig Gen Abdel Aziz Wadi, chairman of the court.
During the chaos that followed, some members of Hamas broke into the detention room and fatally shot Sababi, Wadi said.
