Israel's most wanted militant 'wounded in Gaza air strike'
Mohammed Deif, the Palestinian militant who has been top of Israel’s wanted list for a decade, was wounded in an air strike on a house in Gaza City early today, the military said.
The military said it did not know how badly Deif was injured. Deif’s Hamas group did not confirm the report.
Deif, a master bombmaker, has been targeted several times in Israeli assassination attempts and in the past has been reported to have been seriously wounded.
Israel holds him responsible for many suicide bombing attacks in Israel over the past decade.
Israeli aircraft blasted the house and killed at least six people during a top meeting of Hamas commanders, as troops stepped up their offensive in the southern Gaza Strip.
The two-storey house was in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, a Hamas stronghold in Gaza City.
Nervous Hamas activists carefully inspected the bodies being brought into the hospital. At daybreak they disclosed that Raad Saed, a senior Gaza commander, was injured and was being treated at a secret location.
Among the dead were two children and a woman, and at least 24 people were wounded, hospital officials said.
Abu Obeideh, spokesman for the military wing of Hamas, issued an unusually strong condemnation, using language employed only when Israel had assassinated top Hamas leaders. “We will make the leaders of the Zionist regime regret this Nazi crime,” said part of his long statement.
Witnesses said the house was struck by a missile fired from an Israeli warplane. The Israeli military said it attacked the house because it was a “meeting place for terrorists” who were planning attacks and rocket launches.
The house belonged to Hamas activist Dr Nabil al-Salmiah in Gaza City. Health minister Bassem Naim said six people were known to have died, including two children, and 27 wounded. He said the number of body parts and fragments had led to earlier statements that seven were killed.
A senior Hamas commander was among the wounded, but Hamas officials said they did not know who was killed.
The building collapsed from the force of the blast, burying people under the rubble. Hamas activists said additional victims might be buried in the cellar.
Palestinian rescue teams dodged broken water pipes and electricity wires searching the rubble with bulldozers, shovels and their hands and to get to injured people screaming for help.
The scene resembled the aftermath of a 2002 attack, when an Israeli warplane dropped on one-ton bomb on the house of a Hamas leader in Gaza, killing him and 14 other people, including nine children. The attack set off complaints from human rights groups that are still reverberating.
A neighbour, Safwan Amamour, 39, said he and his wife were cleaning their house next door when they heard a huge explosion, and he was hit by flying rubble.
“No words can describe this destruction, this hellish damage, which I will remember of the rest of my life,” he said.
Hamas official Ismail Radwan pledged to hit back at Israel. “It was a terrible, bloody massacre, and the Zionists will pay a heavy price for it,” he said.
Israeli forces rolled into Gaza from the Kissufim crossing, once the main access point to Jewish settlements, and an access road 2.5 miles to the south, menacing the nearby city of Khan Younis and town of Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli military confirmed that forces were operating in southern Gaza, but gave no details. The two-week offensive is by far the largest since Israel pulled out of Gaza last summer, destroying all 21 settlements there.
Israel launched its offensive on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants linked to the Hamas-led government captured an Israeli soldier in a cross-border raid. The operation was expanded last week to halt Palestinian militants from firing home-made rockets into Israel.
Israeli forces have been parked in the south-east corner of Gaza, near the site of the June 25 attack, since the beginning of the offensive. Last week Israeli forces swept through northern Gaza in a two-day operation, leaving widespread destruction.
Israeli forces have knocked out much of Gaza’s power supply and left more than 50 Palestinians dead, most of them gunmen. One Israeli soldier has died.
The decision to widen the operation came as the European Union began delivering aid to Gaza in a bid to repair some of the damage caused by the Israeli invasion.
Palestinian militants use northern Gaza and the areas taken in the latest incursion to set up and launch rockets at Israeli towns and villages.
