Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Hamas movement, warned Israeli on Saturday against further strikes on the Gaza Strip as conflicts between the Gazan militants and the Israeli army continues to escalate.
“If the previous round of confrontation last week was not enough to retaliate the Israeli occupation’s crimes and make it understand the message of resistance, we are ready to smash its stubbornness and halt its crimes …,” said the group in a leaflet emailed to reporters.
Overnight and predawn, Israeli F16 war jets carried out four intensive airstrikes on security compounds in the Gaza Strip that belong to Hamas, wounding at least 20 people in northern and central Gaza Strip as well as in Gaza City center.
On Saturday morning, Israeli airstrikes on eastern Gaza City and southeastern Gaza Strip killed two Palestinians, a 4-year-old boy and a 25-year-old militant, and injured at least seven people, according to Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Hamas-run ministry of health.
“What happened last night and this morning was barbarian assaults carried out by the occupation, where innocent people were killed and injured and severe damages were caused… We will respond in a proper place and at a proper time,” said the leaflet.
On Saturday afternoon, one Palestinian was killed and several others wounded in a fresh Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, according to medics and witnesses.
Al-Qedra told Xinhua that since Monday, 15 Palestinians have been killed and some 70 injured, many of them still in hospitals, in the ongoing intensive Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling on the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, Israel denied that its airstrikes had killed the 4- year-old boy east of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, alleging that the boy might be killed by a local homemade rocket that exploded before it was launched.
“Let Israel says whatever it wants, we have the evidence that the 4-year-old boy was killed and his father and two other bystanders were injured by the shrapnel of the Israeli warplanes missile,” said al-Qedra.
On Wednesday night, al-Qassam Brigades accepted an Egyptian- brokered understanding to restore calm in the Gaza Strip. The group refrained from launching rockets.
However, minor militant groups, who did not recognize the understanding, kept firing rockets from the coastal enclave into southern Israeli communities.
Israel said that since Thursday morning, more than 30 rockets have been fired into Israel.
On Friday, two radical Islamic Salafists (radical Sunnis) were killed in two separate Israeli attacks. One was killed near al- Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip and the other was killed in northern Gaza. Israel said both of them were killed after they fired rockets towards Israel.
“This aggression on our people and on our resistance would never break our determination to continue struggling against it. We are certain that the enemy will be a looser and its flag would be taken down. We call on our people for more patience and steadfastness until we achieve victory,” said al-Qassam.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) leadership based in the West Bank had on Saturday called on all involved parties to enforce a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The PNA leadership lost control of the enclave to Hamas in 2007.
The ceasefire must be “mutual, comprehensive and must take effect simultaneously,” said Saeb Erekat, a member of the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the top peace negotiator, who recently held talks in the United States with US officials.
Erekat noted that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been exerting efforts to calm down the situation in the Gaza Strip. Several deals and understandings were previously reached and were always violated.
Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas for the first time in more than a year, fired tens of rockets and missiles into Israel, saying that was in response to two Israeli airstrikes that killed four people on Monday. Israel studies more escalation of conflict within the coming few days.
