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Hamas
vowed to avenge the death of 15 Palestinians in a deadly raid on
Gaza on July 23
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GAZA
CITY, August 5 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - More than 10,000
Palestinian supporters of the Islamic resistance group Hamas marched
through Gaza City Sunday evening, August 4, in remembrance of a deadly
Israeli raid that killed 15 civilians and wounded 176 on July 23.
The
massive demonstration followed a retaliatory attack by the Islamic
group in which nine Israelis were killed and dozens were wounded.
Early
Tuesday, July 23, Israel used a U.S.-made F-16 warplane to drop a
one-ton bomb on a densely populated Gaza district, killing 15
civilians, twelve of them children, including a two-month-old infant,
and wounding 176 others.
Hamas
vowed after the deadly raid to continue martyr operations and avenge
the death of the 15 Palestinians, including Salah Shehada, the chief
of its military wing in Gaza.
“There
will be no more truce initiatives,” said Hamas spiritual leader,
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in reference to Hamas’s earlier announcement of
a conditional truce and a halt of all operations in return for an
Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank – an announcement made before
the Israeli raid.
On
Sunday, three separate demonstrations led by trucks mounted with
loudspeakers converged at the center of the city in a rally which
ended up at the house of a Palestinian resistance fighter killed in a
failed attack on a Jewish settlement, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
Members
of the group said the bombing of a bus earlier close to the town of
Safad, north of Lake Galilee, was the "second response" to
Israel's assassination of Shehada, AFP added.
The
marchers, most of them young men and boys, walked in almost complete
darkness along dusty streets in the sweltering heat because of an
electricity blackout. Several carried the Islamic group's trademark
black flag.
They
chanted slogans claiming Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and
protested against Israeli orders to expel relatives of Palestinian
activists from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.
They
said Israel may control the fate of the families of Palestinian
resistance activists, but warned that Hamas was making sure Israel had
"no security and no hope."
Members
of the group's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, fired
shots in the air along the way.
They
ended their march at the home of an activist killed early Sunday
wearing a wetsuit on the northern coast near the Dugit settlement in
Gaza, and read aloud his last testament for the "martyr"
operation.
The
frogman was spotted by an Israeli occupation army observation post as
he left the sea and approached the settlement, and was shot dead,
according to the Israeli army.
There
was no claim of responsibility for the seaborne attack which,
according to Palestinian officials, sparked an army incursion into a
nearby Palestinian area that destroyed a government holiday camp.
Hamas's
"first response" to the assassination of Shehada along with
14 other civilians, was the bombing of a student cafeteria at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem on July 31 which killed seven people,
including five American citizens.
In
recent weeks, Israeli authorities have begun systematically
demolishing the homes of dead Palestinian activists’ families in a
bid to deter attacks which their reoccupation of virtually all the
West Bank has sparked and has failed to halt.
