Israeli jets raid Rafah in southern Gaza Strip, two Palestinians killed

Israeli jets raid Rafah in southern Gaza Strip, two Palestinians killed

Two Palestinian militants were killed and another two wounded on Saturday night in an Israeli airstrike on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, while another five militants were killed earlier that day also in an Israeli airstrike, medics and witnesses said.

Israeli war jets fired a missile and struck a group of militants belonging to the Islamic Jihad (Hoy War) movement's armed wing Al-Quds Brigades near the inoperative Gaza Airport on Saturday evening, eyewitnesses in the city told Xinhua.

Two Palestinians were killed and another two seriously wounded by the shrapnel of missile, according to medics at Abu Yousef al- Najjar.

The militants were trying to launch rockets at some targets in southern Israel, in revenge for an earlier Israeli airstrike on a Jihad training post in Rafah that killed five Jihad militants, witnesses said.

Israel killed five militants and critically wounded another three in the earlier airstrike, claiming that the killed were behind two Grad rocket attacks on central Israel two days ago.

After the earlier airstrike, Israeli Radio said around seven Russian-made long-range Grad missiles were fired from Gaza at several towns and cities in central and southern Israel, wounding at least five Israelis, one of them in critical condition.

The "barrage" of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip had destroyed a school in Ashdod and several houses in central and southern Israel, the radio said.

Several militant groups in Gaza, including Al-Quds Brigades, have claimed responsibility for Saturday's rocket attacks on Israel.

Al-Quds Brigades said on Saturday evening that it had launched several long-range Grad rockets at central Israeli towns of Ashdod and Yavneh, as well as the southern Israeli town of Be'er Sheba, as a response to the earlier killing of five of its militants.

"(The response) had started with hitting the (Israeli) cities of Ashdod and Yavneh and their suburbs with Grad rockets," the group said in a message sent to reporters in Gaza.

Earlier Saturday, the group issued a statement following the attack on its training base, saying that their response to the Israeli killing "will be hard."

The armed wings of two left-wing Palestinian groups, the Democratic Front (DFLP) and the Popular Front (PFLP), said in two separate statements that they also fired two Grad rockets and some mortar shells at southern Israel.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah movement, also said in a leaflet that its militants fired a Grad rocket from Gaza Strip at southern Israel in revenge for the killing of five Jihad militants.

The latest escalation of violence between Israel and Gaza militant groups was in late August, when around 30 Palestinians and two Israelis were killed. A truce mediated by Egypt was then reached between the two sides.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) called on the Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip to be self- restraint and "not to give Israel an excuse to wage a war on the Gaza Strip."

Editor: Mu Xuequan

English.news.cn   2011-10-30 05:30:24 FeedbackPrintRSS
GAZA, Oct. 29 (Xinhua)