Monday, September 21, 2009

DTN News: Israeli Tank Fire Kills Two Palestinians

DTN News: Israeli Tank Fire Kills Two Palestinians *Source: DTN News / Int'l Media
(NSI News Source Info) BEIRUT, Lebanon - September 21, 2009: Israeli tank fire has killed two Palestinian men in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources say, with one of them identified as an Islamist militant. Sunday's shelling in eastern Gaza came hours after the army said several rockets were fired at the Jewish state from the Islamist Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, without causing casualties or damage. (Image: Israeli tanks patrolling near Gaza's border) Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, identified one of the dead men as one of its members. Medical sources said the other was a 25-year-old but could not specify if he was a militant. Two other Palestinians were wounded in the shelling, they said. Soldiers spotted Palestinian militants transporting booby-trapped bombs near the security fence with Israel and opened up with tank fire, hitting the suspects, Israeli military sources said. According to Israeli state radio, two rockets exploded in Israel on Sunday morning without causing injuries or damage, although the army could not confirm the number of devices. In late December, Israel launched a deadly offensive against Hamas to stop rocket fire from Gaza. Since then, more than 200 rockets and mortar rounds have slammed into Israel from the Palestinian territory, the army says.
The army claimed that Hamas had, hours before, launched an unspecified number of rockets into Israel causing no casualties. The developments came as the coastal sliver suffers under a wholesale blockade which Israel has imposed since 2007 when Hamas took over as the area's democratically-elected ruler.
Italian soldiers serving with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) secure an area near the site from which rockets were fired into Israel, in the southern Lebanese village of Qlaileh. Several rockets fired from southern Lebanon slammed into Israel triggering retaliatory artillery fire across the border, the Israeli military said. UNIFIL said it had no report of casualties on either side.
The blockade continued through the three-week-long Israeli attacks on Gaza in late December and early January, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians

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