Israeli troops kill Palestinian at border
Israeli troops have shot dead a Palestinian fighter at the Erez border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Israel said the Palestinian was killed on Wednesday in a fire fight that erupted after a group of resistance fighters infiltrated the Israeli part of the Erez terminal.
“One of the terrorists threw an explosive device and fired towards the soldiers who killed him,” an Israeli military source said.
He added that at least three Palestinian policemen had also been injured during the incident. He could not say how the Palestinian fighters managed to enter the terminal.
Palestinian security sources confirmed the death and said Israeli troops had arrested all Palestinian police officials at the terminal.
The Islamic Jihad group and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said in a statement that they jointly carried out the attack.
Grisly killings
The killing came just hours after Israeli occupation forces killed eight Palestinians, including six children, on Tuesday.
Artillery shells fired by Israeli tanks on a northern Gaza farm killed seven, including the children, while an eighth Palestinian was killed in southeast Gaza.
Medical sources at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Bait Lahya in northern Gaza told Aljazeera.net that the six child victims were from one family.
The killings brought angry condemnation from Mahmud Abbas – front-runner in the race for Palestinian president to be held on Sunday – who called Israel “the Zionist enemy”.
“This will not bring peace for anyone. If such aggression continues we will not be able to engage in a peace process,” he said.
He later tried to visit the wounded in a Bait Lahya hospital but drove away without getting out of his car because of tank bursts nearby after a rocket volley by resistance fighters into Israel.