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Israeli Missiles Kill 6 Palestinians in Nablus, Gaza
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The extrajudicial killings by Israel are pushing the situation to explosion edge. (Reuters)
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GAZA,
July 15, 2005 (IslamOnlilne.net & News Agencies) – Six
Palestinians were killed Friday, July 15, in two simultaneous Israeli
aerial raids on Gaza Strip and the West Bank, prompting the
Palestinian Authority to accuse Israel of "dangerous
escalation".
Four
members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas were killed when an
Israeli helicopter carried out a missile strike on a van traveling in
an eastern district of Gaza City, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
Witnesses
said they saw a missile slam into a small van, devastating the vehicle
and sending shrapnel soaring into the air.
Palestinian
medical sources said five civilians, including a child, were also
wounded in the Israeli raid.
An
AFP journalist and witnesses said a headless corpse, M-16s, fragments
of militant rockets and torn, bloodied pieces of human flesh littered
the road after the Gaza explosion as volunteers ferried body parts to
hospital.
Hamas
armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, told AFP that four the
members killed in the Israeli raid were Hassem Abu Ras, Adel Hanyiah,
Saber Abu Assi and Amjad Arafat.
An
Israeli army spokesman confirmed the air strike, claiming that the
four Palestinians had been transporting explosives through Gaza City
when their van was hit by rockets fired by an Israeli helicopter.
More
Killings
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The Palestinian Authority accuses Israel of seeking to undermine any hopes of peace. (Reuters)
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Just
moments earlier, Israeli helicopters had fired three rockets near the
town of Salfit, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, killing two
members of Hamas and wounding another.
Witnesses
said three missiles were fired at a car in a mountainous area between
the settlement of Ariel and the Palestinian town of Salfit.
"I
saw two helicopters firing three missiles in the area of Wadi Al-Shaer
(mountain), then they sprayed the area with heavy machine gunfire.
Usually men wanted by Israel hide there," local resident
Al-Watheq Billah, told Reuters by telephone.
Medical
sources in Salfit said Mohammed Marie, a leader from the Qassam
Brigades in the area, was cut to pieces in the blast.
Palestinian
security sources said the dead had been wanted by the Israeli army for
two years as they were local leaders of the Hamas armed wing.
"They
were important leaders in the Qassam Brigades in Salfit. They were
shot by Israeli Apache helicopters," a security source told AFP.
Before
dawn Friday, an Israeli helicopter carried out three raids on northern
Gaza Strip.
The
latest deaths raised the overall toll since the September 2000 start
of the Palestinian Intifada to 4,794, including 3,720 Palestinians and
998 Israelis, according to an AFP count.
Condemnation
The
Palestinian Authority condemned the Israeli attacks as a
"dangerous escalation", saying Israel is trying to destroy
its own efforts to impose the rule of the law in the chaotic occupied
territories.
"We
strongly condemn the dangerous Israeli escalation. At the same time
that the Palestinian Authority is trying to impose the law, Israel
wants to destroy all those such efforts," chief Palestinian
negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
Palestinian
leader Mahmoud Abbas, struggling to preserve the shaky ceasefire with
Israel, managed to convince resistance factions in March to observe a
"period of calm" conditional on Israel ending its
aggressions against them.
Since
then, the calm has been put to the test several times in view of
continued Israeli violations.
Over
the past three months, many Palestinians were killed and wounded by
Israeli gunfire, drawing retaliatory mortar and rocket attacks from
Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters on Jewish settlements in the occupied
territories.
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