News / Middle East

Israeli Warplanes Kill 5 Palestinian Militants in Gaza

Palestinians wheel the body of a militant at a hospital, following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip October 13, 2012.Palestinians wheel the body of a militant at a hospital, following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip October 13, 2012.
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Palestinians wheel the body of a militant at a hospital, following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip October 13, 2012.
Palestinians wheel the body of a militant at a hospital, following an Israeli air strike in the northern Gaza Strip October 13, 2012.
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VOA News

 

Israeli warplanes carried out several raids on Palestinians suspected of firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel, killing five militants, including the head of a Salafist group linked to al-Qaida.
 
Gaza medics said the first Israeli air strike killed Salafist commander Hisham Saidani, who was in his 40s, and a fellow militant as the two rode a motorcycle late Saturday in northern Gaza. 
 
They said a second Israeli attack killed a Palestinian militant and wounded another on a motorcycle in southern Gaza early Sunday, while a third air strike killed two militants in central Gaza later in the day.  Several other people were wounded in the raids. 
 
The Israeli military said it struck Palestinian militants who either had just fired rockets at Israel or planned to do so imminently.  Several rockets landed inside Israeli territory Sunday without causing casualties. 
 
Speaking to the Israeli Cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the "global jihad" movement is intensifying its efforts to target Israelis.  He said his nation will be "aggressive" in responding to and pre-empting such attacks. 
 
Gaza residents said Saidani led a Salafist group called Tawhid wa-Jihad, or "One God and Holy War."  The Israeli military said he had been involved in previous attacks on Israel and was planning another operation along the Israeli border with Egypt's Sinai peninsula.  Supporters of Saidani vowed revenge. 
 
Ultraconservative Salafists have only a small presence in Gaza, which is run by the Hamas militant group that adheres to the more popular conservative Islam of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. 

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by: Hiaku Masakai from: Japan
October 16, 2012 3:28 PM
Israel, you are hero in Japanese culture... we love you, and want to be like you... many here people think Japan is Israel and China is Arabs... admirations from Japan


by: LeRoy Padmore from: Jersey City,NJ
October 16, 2012 4:05 AM
This is the only way this attack on the Jewish people will stop.if it doesn't stop that Israel has to return fire where fire came from.what give the Arabs the right to kill the Jews,fire rockets into Israel and Israel cannot do the same?

if a man holds a military weapon in his hands,it makes him a military man.if a man wears a military uniform,it makes him a military in time of war.and Israel is at war with the Arabs.what make them civilian? a man with a military weapon in his hands,is he a civilian?Israel has the right to defend herself against any military force.we support Israel,we stand with Israel,God Bless Israel,and God Bless the Jewish People


by: Rev. Nazarins from: USA
October 15, 2012 11:53 AM
there is no difference between Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Syrian, Libyans, Palestinians... Arabs are Arabs... and there are several Billions of them... their aim, and they do not conceal it, is the destruction of Israel and the West. I think that Israel must stop offer peace and accommodations with these Arabs and start inflicting some real damage, for the sake of Western Civilization

and one last thing... God bless you Col. T. S.


by: JohnWV from: USA
October 15, 2012 9:31 AM
The UN Human Rights Council has adjudged the Jewish state guilty of violating international law by punitively destroying infrastructure and killing civilians of occupied and besieged Palestine. The Jews enjoy a kill ratio of near one hundred to one. As was the WW2 French Underground, occupied Palestine is allowed to resist and, within limits, kill its occupiers. Doing so is neither terrorism nor a war crime. The Palestinian's response with crude rockets is pathetic. But those rockets do confirm that Palestine will not accept defeat, they “give proof through the night that (their) flag is still there.”


by: JohnWV from: USA
October 15, 2012 9:29 AM
Besieged Palestinian Gaza is an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly...and, surprise, surprise - they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment? Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now under attack you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn't possibly reach an accommodation. And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.


by: Col. T. S. from: USA
October 15, 2012 3:22 AM
very few in the world know what it must take to achieve these surgically precise operations... we who do, salute you...!!!
stealth precision silence and humility - the Israeli signature...
from an old admirer
US Marine Corps... Sempre Fi


by: phishuh from: district of columbia
October 14, 2012 11:37 PM
sometimes i just wish that israel would simply pave over gaza... of course the liberals and jew-haters would condemn it, but seriously? c'mon... get rid of hamas, and perhaps there may be a begining to some motivated peace discussions... those in the west bank are enjoying a pretty darn good life style... why don't the non-hamas gazans rise up... surely they know that their "breathern" are doing far better than they, no?


by: Sarah from: Jerusalem
October 14, 2012 9:33 AM
Brilliant--you write as if this happened in a vacuum, failing to mention the 60 rockets and missiles fired into Israel this last week, culminating in one which struck a home in Netivot, spraying shrapnel all over a child's bedroom.


by: Sgt. T. Lehrer from: UK Royal Marines
October 14, 2012 8:31 AM
Damn these guys are good... hands down, and bar none, the Israelis are the best in the world!!!


by: Rev. Matthias Blake from: UK
October 14, 2012 7:32 AM
what would the Turks have done to the Arab Palestinians if they had been on the receiving end of 3000 rockets a day into their population centers...??? or for that matter, what would have Assad do...??? or indeed the Egyptians....??? I begin to believe that the Palestinians are very lucky that the world regard Israel as the only real Christians in the world... but that luck - is about to expire... and not before time...

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