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A
Palestinian police bomb squad officer and others inspect the
wreckage of a burned car hit by an Israeli F-16 missile
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GAZA
CITY, April 8 (Islamonline.net & News Agencies) - Israeli
U.S.-made F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters pounded a residential
area in Gaza City Tuesday, April 8, killing at least seven
Palestinians and wounding more than 20 others.
One
of the dead was identified as Saadi al-Arabit, a local leader of the
Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic resistance
movement Hamas, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
One
of al-Arabit’s aides was also killed, while women and children were
among the 27 injured, including six in life-threatening condition,
Palestinian sources confirmed.
Witnesses
said the Israeli warplanes appeared to be targeting a car but also hit
a residential area.
Security
sources said the car belonged to members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam
Brigades.
It
was unclear if anyone inside the car was hurt in the attack.
Hamas
Vows Revenge
Hamas
vowed late Tuesday to "quickly" avenge the deaths of the
seven Palestinians.
"Hamas
will quickly revenge this attack, this assassination of one of the
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza and also for the attacks on
Baghdad," Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, a leading hamas figure, told
AFP, also referring to the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq.
"If
the Israelis continue, we will continue our resistance and we will
take our revenge for this crime very soon," Rantissi thundered.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat also lambasted the attack.
"We
condemn this crime by Israel which killed seven Palestinians and
wounded 27, including children," he told AFP by telephone.
"Israel
is using the war in Iraq to escalate its aggression against the
Palestinian people."
More
Crimes
Israeli
forces Tuesday seriously wounded a Palestinian woman in the West Bank
town of Jenin while razing the house of a Palestinian resistance
fighter who killed six Israelis in a shooting spree last year.
The
45-year-old woman was in a car which came under army fire as it was
entering Jenin, Palestinian security officials said. It was not
immediately clear why the Israeli soldiers opened fire.
The
Israeli army also said it demolished the home of Abdelsalem Hassuna, a
member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah, in the
village of Beit Amrin, north of Nablus.
Israel
has destroyed more some 200 family homes of Palestinian resistance
fighters in an attempt to dissuade future attackers.
Critics
of the policy charge it amounts to collective punishment, with the
attackers’ families are often left homeless.
In
addition, the Israeli army abducted 10 “wanted” Palestinians in
overnight operations in the West Bank, which it reoccupied last June
after a spate of devastating Palestinian bombings.
Two
of them were from the group Islamic Jihad, detained in Al-Khalil in
the south, while two Fatah members seized in the north.
Another
was Hamas member Yussef Mohammed al-Faqi, who was hit in a Bethlehem
firefight with the Israeli army that claimed the life of top Hamas
resistance leader Ali Elyan on March 18.
Faqi
was wounded in the shoot-out but escaped, only to be captured at a
checkpoint in the area on Tuesday.
