Lethal attack on Gaza
An Israeli air strike has killed a Hamas commander and rocket maker in the Gaza Strip, the group said.
Issa Batran was killed by a missile that hit his caravan in the central Gaza Strip, Hamas said yesterday.
Israel launched air strikes against targets in Gaza on after a rocket fired from the enclave exploded in the city of Ashkelon.
The air strikes also hit a training camp in Gaza City used by Hamas and smuggling tunnels along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Several people were wounded by debris in Gaza City.
Hamas said Batran was a rocket maker and the head of its military wing in the central Gaza Strip.
The militant group has a rocket arsenal of crude, home-made projectiles and longer-range rockets smuggled in through tunnels under the border with Egypt.
Israel carried out the air strikes after militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Ashkelon on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, blowing out the windows of an apartment block and damaging parked cars in a residential area.
No one was injured by the blast, which police said was caused by a 122mm, Chinese-made Grad rocket.
But the attack ended over a year of calm for the Israeli city closest to Gaza. It was the most serious attack on Ashkelon, which has a population of 125,000 and lies on the coast about 12km north of the Gaza Strip, since Israel ended a three-week military offensive in Gaza in January 2009.
That offensive largely ended rocket fire into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
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Tags: Gaza,
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