Israeli air raid in Gaza kills one
Unprovoked strike killed a member of the Fatah-aligned Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
Gaza: An Israeli air raid on Wednesday in the northern Gaza Strip killed one Palestinian and wounded three others, the Israeli army and a Palestinian official said.
A Gaza health ministry spokesman said one person was killed and three wounded on a beach in the area of Beit Lahiya, located near the Palestinian enclave’s northern border with Israel.
The spokesman, Ashraf Al Qudra, identified the person killed as Mousa Abu Zuaiter, 31, and said the casualties were the result of Israeli rocket fire.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, said he was one of its members and vowed revenge.
His funeral was held Wednesday in the Jabalia refugee camp.
The air raid was unprovoked.
Senior Hamas official Salah Al Bardawil warned Israel after the strike that “targeting citizens in Beit Lahiya this morning is playing with fire.”
The Gaza Strip has remained largely calm despite violence in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. Sporadic violent protests have broken out along the heavily guarded border and a number of Palestinians have been killed during clashes with Israeli forces.
Meanwhile in occupied Jerusalem, a sentencing hearing in the case of two young Jewish terrorists convicted last year of the kidnap and murder of a Palestinian teenager was expected to be held.
The two were minors at the time of the chilling 2014 attack in which they snatched Mohammad Abu Khdeir, 16, from an occupied east Jerusalem street and subsequently burned him alive.
They cannot be identified, by court order, and Wednesday’s deliberations, due to begin at 2:30 pm (1230 GMT), are to be held behind closed doors.
The killing was part of a spiral of violence that led to a brutal 50-day Israeli assault on Gaza.
Israeli colonist Yousuf Haim Ben-David, 31, is said to have led the attack on Abu Khdeir.
The court has found that he committed the crime but is yet to rule if he is mentally competent after his lawyers tried to use that as a defence. Justice officials said he would not be in court on Wednesday.
Abu Khdeir was abducted and killed weeks after the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank.
The Gaza war that followed killed more than 2,200 people, making 2014 the bloodiest year of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the United Nations.
