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Hamas Shells Sderot in Response to Leader’s Killing
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Palestinians surround the destroyed car of Salmieh after it was hit by an Israeli missile
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GAZA
CITY, September 20 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
Palestinian resistance group Hamas Monday, September 20, fired a
string of Qassam rockets at southern occupied towns and Jewish
settlements as a “first response” to the assassination of one of
its senior military leaders by Israel.
One
rocket was fired at the southern town of Sderot at 8:15 (05:15 GMT),
but caused not casualties.
Sderot
is located south of what has been known as Israel since 1948. It has
come recently under almost daily rocket attacks by Hamas.
“We
pledge to launch more rocket attacks at usurped Sderot until it is
liberated from the Israeli occupation,” Hamas said in a statement.
There
is no word yet about the casualties caused by the rocket attack, which
came as an immediate reaction to the killing of Khaled Abu Salmieh and
injured six others, including a six-year-old boy.
Salmieh,
33, a member of Ezzudin Al-Qassam Brigades, was killed Sunday,
September 19, when his car took a direct hit from a rocket fired by
the Israeli aircraft on Al-Jalah Street in the heart of the city,
witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Earlier,
appeals to take revenge for the killing of Khaled Abu Salmieh were
read out in mosques across the Gaza Strip.
The
Sderot rocket attack came despite a state-of-the-art early warning
system set up the Israeli occupation army in the Negev town so that
residents can take cover.
Mortar
Attacks
Three
mortar shells were also fired Monday by Hamas at the “usurped”
Morage town in the southern Gaza Strip, Hamas said in a statement
released on its website.
Qassam
rockets were also fired at Iad Mordechai, Neve Decalim and Netzarim in
the Gaza Strip.
Also
Monday, a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire near a
Jewish settlement in the central Gaza Strip.
Last
week, three fighters of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military
wing of Fatah, were killed in a similar Israeli helicopter strike on
their vehicle in the northern West Bank last Monday.
The
latest death brought to 4,321 the overall toll since the September
2000 start of the Palestinian Intifada, including 3,307 Palestinians
and 943 Israelis, according to an AFP tally.
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