| Israel air strikes kill two Gazans on third day |
GAZA Israeli air strikes killed a Palestinian fighter and a 14-year-old boy on Wednesday as fighting across the border of the Gaza Strip entered a third day, despite Egyptian calls for a truce.
A member of one of Gaza’s fringe Salafi networks died and a comrade was wounded in an air strike on their motorcycle in southern Rafah, near Gaza’s border with the Egyptian Sinai, medical officials said.
A second air strike, in Gaza City, killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded his father, also a civilian, the officials said. The Israeli military confirmed the air strikes happened but gave no details on the second attack.
Palestinians fired around 20 rockets into Israel on Wednesday, causing no casualties, the Israeli military said.
Israel said the men targeted in Rafah were involved in a raid on Monday from adjacent Sinai territory into the Jewish state, which sparked the flare-up in violence.
One Israeli was killed in that attack and Israeli troops shot and killed two gunmen. A newly formed radical Islamist movement, the ‘Shura Council of Mujahideen in the Holy Land’, claimed responsibility for the raid.
There was no let-up in rocket fire from Gaza, police and the military said.
As the violence in and around Gaza entered its third day, Israeli police raised their level of alert in the towns and villages within rocket range, although there were no casualties in the latest strikes.
“We have raised our level of alert and reinforced patrols in areas near the Gaza Strip,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
“Overnight, IAF (Israel Air Force) aircraft targeted six terror activity sites in the Gaza Strip. Hits were confirmed,” a military statement said, later confirming a seventh strike in what it said was a response to the persistent rocket fire.
Among the sites hit were a training centre used by militants from the Hamas armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, and several naval police outposts, Palestinian security sources said.
Separately, a cluster of Jewish settlers slated for eviction under an Israeli court order said they would go quietly, sparing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a showdown with a core constituency.
The 30 families living in five unlicensed apartment blocs in Beit El accepted a government proposal to move them, and physically relocate the buildings, while the state would also erect 300 new homes elsewhere in their West Bank settlement.
“We are peaceful people,” the settlers said in a statement after overnight negotiations between Beit El’s chief rabbi and Netanyahu aides. “Fraternal struggles rupture all of society ... and consume our creative energies, which are meant to be building up the nation.”
Israel’s Supreme Court had ruled that the apartment blocs, on Beit El’s Ulpana hill, should be torn down by July 1 as they sit on privately owned Palestinian land.
That promised a major test for Netanyahu, who is loath either to upset his ultranationalist base or defy Israel’s judiciary over policy in the West Bank.
Agencies
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