By Xinhua
Gaza : A Fatah prisoner in a prison in Gaza border town of Rafah was killed on Thursday afternoon, increasing the Palestinian toll in a daylong of Israeli air and ground strikes against militant groups in the Gaza Strip to nine while around 30 others were wounded, witnesses and hospital officials said.
A Fatah leaflet said Israeli aircraft bombed a prison in Rafah in the afternoon, killing a Fatah member. The Israeli military also confirmed this.
Earlier, Mo’awyea Hassanein, chief of emergency in the ministry of health, said eight Palestinians were killed, including five people from the same family, and three militants, members of Hamas movement.
Palestinian residents said the Israeli tank shells hit a house in the eastern outskirts of Bani Sohayla village east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip. The house belongs to Mohamed Fayyad, who was killed along with his wife Karima, their two sons Sami and Ahmed and their daughter Asma.
Israel Radio quoted an Israeli army spokesman as saying that Sami, 25, a member of al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) movement, opened fire from the house at the soldiers.
Medics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said that the wife of Sami and their three-year-old girl were also critically injured in the tank’s shelling.
In a leaflet, Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said three of its members were killed in three separate air and ground strikes, adding that two were killed in eastern Khan Younis and one was killed and five others wounded in a fresh Israeli air strike on a group of Hamas in Sheja’eya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City.
In Khan Younis, several Israeli army tanks and armored vehicles backed by Israeli fight aircraft stormed the eastern part of the village, where several militant groups confronted the invading Israeli army forces.
Residents said there was a real war at the scene, where Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants confronted each other for several hours before the Israeli army’s withdrawal from the area in the early afternoon.
The Israeli army, according to the residents, had fired nine missiles and tanks shells at their houses and at militants who were confronting the Israeli army forces with heavy gunfire.
Both the deposed government of Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in Ramallah condemned the Israeli military operations against the Gaza Strip, where 15 people had been killed since early Wednesday.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, President Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman, told reporters in Ramallah that the Israeli escalations and killings in the Palestinian territories “would undermine any chance to go ahead with progress in the peace talks.”