GAZA CITY (Agencies)
Two Israeli civilians and three Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in an explosion of violence in and around Gaza after Palestinian commandos stormed a border crossing with Israel.
The attack came after an early morning gunbattle left an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian gunman dead, shattering a near month-long lull that followed a bloody Israeli blitz on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli security officials said Palestinian fighters breached the border near the Nahal Oz crossing east of Gaza City and moved into Israel under the cover of a heavy barrage of mortar rounds.
The militants killed two Israeli civilians in their 30s, according to Magen David Adom rescue services, in what the army called a "failed abduction attempt."
Police said one Palestinian militant was killed, one was captured and another two managed to flee back into Gaza, as emergency and security services across southern Israel went on high alert.
The operation was claimed by the Popular Resistance Committees, the Islamic Jihad movement, and the Mujahedeen, a little-known group which claimed to be linked to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.
Shortly afterwards, an Israeli military aircraft hit a vehicle carrying Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza City, injuring three, one of them seriously, Palestinian medics said.
Minutes later several Israeli tanks entered Gaza through Nahal Oz, and two Palestinians were killed when an artillery round slammed into a nearby house, medics said.
Israel swiftly blamed Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza.
Since Israel and the Palestinians formally revived peace talks in November 376 people have been killed, most of them Gaza militants, according to an AFP tally. |
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Egypt border alert Egypt went on high alert on Wednesday after Hamas threatened a repeat of a January breach of the Gaza-Egypt border in January, warning it would "not take lightly the protection of its frontiers against any attempt to violate them, no matter who they are."
Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza, Israel has sealed off the strip from all but vital humanitarian goods in a bid to halt rocket attacks. It tightened the restrictions in January, causing widespread shortages in fuel and other supplies.
Hamas threatened on Tuesday to storm Gaza's borders in a repeat of a breach in January that sent hundreds of thousands of weary Palestinians streaming into Egypt to stock up on goods.
"Egypt's borders are a red line you cannot cross," Egypt's state-run MENA news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying. "Egypt is capable of responding to any attempt to violate its frontiers."
Palestinian witnesses in the Gaza Strip said they saw increased numbers of Egyptian security forces deployed on the border, including armoured vehicles, snipers on Rafah rooftops and police with dogs patrolling the frontier.
Hamas has been negotiating with Egypt for weeks in a bid to reopen the Rafah crossing, the only gateway to Gaza that bypasses Israel. |
