Israel hits Hamas base
Israel bombed a Hamas base in the Gaza Strip. At least four Palestinians were killed and a dozen wounded in Wednesday's airstrike in Rafah, which Israel said targeted a building where cross-border rocket attacks have been planned. Hamas has stepped up salvoes in recent days, causing injuries in the Israeli border town of Sderot even as Hamas wages an internal turf war with rivals from the Fatah faction. "Israel will not be part of the internal Palestinian power struggle, but Israel will respond vigorously to the continued firing of Kassam rockets," Defense Minister Amir Peretz said earlier Wednesday.
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REUTERS/Abed Omar Qusini (WEST BANK)
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Israeli aircraft launched missiles at Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least five people, after Hamas fired rocket barrages into Israel in an apparent attempt to draw Israel into increasingly violent Palestinian infighting.
Hamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five. In all, 16 Palestinians were killed in the infighting Wednesday and four in the Israeli airstrike.
The streets of central Gaza City echoed with the rattle of gunfire, and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents huddled in dark homes after electricity to some downtown neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.
In one incident, Hamas gunmen set fire to an 11-story apartment building housing Fatah lawmaker Nema Sheik Ali, the wife of the head of Preventive Security. Witnesses said the gunmen broke into her fifth floor apartment and beat up her and two of her children with their weapons.
"They came, they broke the door," she said. "They assaulted my children and they pushed me aside, then they torched the apartment."
Shadi al-Kashir, a building resident, said his father, wife, five children and two sisters remained inside the building — trapped by the smoke-filled halls and terrified of the gunbattles raging in the entranceway. "They tried to send ambulances, but the ambulances came under fire."
At nightfall, Hamas announced its intention to begin observing a unilateral cease-fire, and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah also called on the warring parties to hold their fire. However, similar truces the two previous evenings did not hold.
SEE: HUDNA the value of Arab Truces
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