Region | Palestinian Territories
Militants vow to step up attacks after Palestinian teen is killed
Israeli artillery killed a Palestinian teenager in the Gaza Strip yesterday, and militants vowed to step up their attacks against Israel.
- AP
- Published: 23:34 May 3, 2009
Gaza City: Israeli artillery killed a Palestinian teenager in the Gaza Strip yesterday, and militants vowed to step up their attacks against Israel.
The artillery fire in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed a Palestinian boy, 17, by hitting his home, and lightly wounded a 2-year-old in a nearby house, doctors said.
The Israeli army said attack was conducted against militants who were launching rockets at Israel, including one that hit a town in the south of the country yesterday, causing no casualties.
On June 28, Israel launched a military offensive in the Gaza Strip to stop militants firing rockets and to retaliate for a militant attack on an army outpost that killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third.
Abu Ahmad, spokesman for the Al Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the militant group Islamic Jihad, said his organisation had urged all its field leaders to conduct as many bombings as possible.
He said the orders were initially issued after the last three days of bloody fighting in the Gaza Strip. "But now it is more urgent. The time won't be long before we'll hear news of the first bombers," he said.
Abu Ahmad said rocket attacks will continue against Israel "as conditions allow. When we can fire them, we'll do it." Abu Qusay, from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian group Fatah, said his group intended to launch "a new campaign for the victory of the Palestinians and the Lebanese." "We will fire even more rockets towards Israel," he said.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group Hamas, which dominates the Palestinian government, said: "There will be an increase in resistance action to prevent a continuation of these massacres."
Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official warned that increasing violence was sidelining moderates, and reinforcing radicals.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, told the French newspaper Le Monde that "moderate Palestinians like me are losing during this crisis" by being drowned out by the violence.
"How to make oneself heard on this point to a people that have long lost all hope? It's too late. Hamas is in power.
And what is happening in Lebanon only reinforces this tendency," Erekat was quoted as saying.
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