Warfare Returns To Gaza; Tunnel Destroyed
Mortar attacks on Jewish Gaza resumed in force today, as several shells fired by Palestinian terrorists landed near buildings in Gush Katif this morning and this afternoon.
They caused light damage, but no one was hurt. Last night, two shells fell near Jewish homes in one of the larger communities in Katif, but again, miraculously, no one was hurt.
IDF troops in Gaza arrested a Hamas member last night when they found two pipe bombs hidden in the trunk of his car. Arab gunmen fired bursts of automatic fire at IDF outposts near N'vei Dekalim and Rafiach, while Palestinians threw grenades at soldiers near the Israel-Egypt border in the Rafiach area. No one was hurt.
Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin said in an NBC interview yesterday that the suicide murders are acts of ‘self-defense,’ and pledged that they would continue. Israeli military sources are in fact warning that Hamas is working "around the clock" to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.
Arutz-7's Moshe Priel reported today that during the recent few days when it appeared that Israel was about to launch a major offensive against Gaza, "there was no terrorism there.
But as soon as [Defense Minister] Ben-Eliezer announced that the offensive was off, the first grenades were thrown at an IDF base, and since then the level of violence has returned to its previous high rates..." Priel also reported that troops discovered and destroyed a cleverly-disguised tunnel used by Arabs to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt.
The 250-meter tunnel was only 90 centimeters (three feet) high, and 60 by 80 centimeters wide, yet was outfitted with electrical and telephone wires, as well as a pulley-driven wagon to take weapons and other combat materials under the border. Its PA-side entrance opened up into a private house.
In other war news today, Arabs fired automatic weapons at a Border Guard force near Beit Hadassah in Hevron; no one was hurt, and the Israelis returned fire, wounding one of the attackers... Jewish motorists traveling near El-Aroub, south of Gush Etzion, were targeted with firebombs and rocks…
A reserve unit of the IDF apprehended a wanted terrorist fugitive south of Hevron, and special Border Guard police force arrested senior Hamas leader Ziyad Kawasama in Hevron... Kol Rina News Agency reports that soldiers found axes and IDF uniforms in the home of a wanted terrorist in a Gaza village near the Jewish community of Morag. The terrorist was arrested, and the items were confiscated. |
