Israelis target house, 5 injured
JERUSALEM — Israeli missiles twice hit a house in a Gaza refugee camp on the beach, wounding a militant Palestinian leader and four other people, a spokesman for a Palestinian group said.
The two airstrikes, one on Monday afternoon and the other after midnight today, targeted the same house in the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City on the Mediterranean, according to witnesses and a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee.
White smoke rose into the sky from the building, and a large crowd quickly gathered around the house at the Shati refugee camp next to Gaza City after the afternoon strike, which wounded three people, including the committee’s leader Abed Quka. Two more people were wounded in the second airstrike, hospital workers said.
The Israeli military refused to comment on either attack. During four years of conflict, Israeli helicopters have targeted dozens of Palestinian buildings and vehicles in Gaza, aiming for militant leaders, headquarters and weapons workshops.
In Gaza City, the Popular Resistance Committee spokesman Abu Abir said the airstrike was aimed at a house used by Abed Quka, the group’s leader in northern Gaza. He was wounded in the attack, but his condition was not known. There was no word on the identities of the others wounded.
The Popular Resistance Committee is an umbrella group of militants who left other Palestinian factions. Its militants do not answer to outside authorities and often carry out attacks against the wishes of others.
Some believe the group was responsible for killing three American security guards in a diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip last October. No arrests have been made in the bombing, and the U.S. government has expressed dissatisfaction with the Palestinian inquiry.
In other violence, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian in a refugee camp next to the West Bank city of Nablus. Palestinians said he was throwing rocks at soldiers. The Israeli military said he was holding a rifle.
Tension in Gaza has also been heightened by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull Israeli forces and settlers out of the seaside territory by the end of next year — a “unilateral disengagement” plan that has rival Palestinian groups jockeying for position.