GAZA
CITY, August 12 (IslamOnline.net) - The armed wings
of the Palestinian Fatah movement and the resistance group Hamas claimed
responsibility for two separate attacks that rocked central Israel and a
Jewish settlement in the West Bank earlier Tuesday, August 12, killing
two Israelis and wounding several others.
Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades claimed the first explosion which tore through a
supermarket in Rosh Ha'ayin town - central Israel - at 9:00 a.m.,
leaving one Israeli dead and ten others injured.
"Responding
to Israeli assassination attempts and plots against the Palestinian
resistance, martyr Khamis Ghazi Faisal Gerwan from Khaled Seif squad
carried out a martyrdom operation in the centre of occupied Palestine in
the settlement of Rosh Ha'ayin, near Tel Aviv," the Brigades said
in a statement, a copy of which was faxed to IslamOnline.net.
"The
martyr blew himself up in a group of Zionists, killing and injuring a
large number of them," it said, vowing to avenge the killing of
Palestinian civilians and carry out more operations "to force the
occupation troops to withdraw from our land."
The
statement also pledged "a decisive response to the massacres of
(Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon."
The
Israeli police said they believed the bomber had detonated a charge he
or she was carrying - possibly in a backpack or in a belt - after being
challenged by a security guard, the BBC News Online
reported.
Doron
Kotler, an official of the Maguen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of
the Red Cross, said one of the wounded was in critical condition, four
serious and five slightly wounded.
About
one hour after the explosion, one settler was killed and two others
injured in an explosion outside the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the
Palestinian West Bank.
Hamas's
armed wing Ezzudin Al-Qassam Brigades claimed the explosion and named
the bomber as activist Islam Ekfeshi, 21, from Nablus.
"We
urge all Hamas resistance cells to be on maximum alert to rapidly
respond to any (Israeli) attempt to violate the hudna (truce) and teach
the Zionists a deterring lessong," the Hamas armed wing said in a
statement.
"The
terrorist Zionists thought that taking the ceasefire initiative signaled
the helplessness of resistance groups before the crimes of the Israeli
occupation troops, believing commitment to the truce would help them
continue their crimes against our land and people without being
punished," it said.
"Therefore,
al-Qassam Brigades took the decision to strike the enemy and retaliate
its incessant crimes since the suspension of military operations.
"Today's
operation came in retaliation for the Zionist violations of the truce,
which were culminated in the assassination of the two Hamas leaders in
Nablus and Askar," the statement asserted.
The
settlement lies 20 kilometers (12 miles) inside the West Bank and has
been at the center of a controversy over Israeli plans to build a wall
around it.
