November 11, 2010

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip.

Injured Palestinians were stranded at the site of the blast in the Absan village east of Khan Younis, witnesses said.

Warplanes targeted two houses with four airstrikes. The homes are owned by Naji Abu Hashem and the Al-Qara family, locals said.

Tanks amassed in the area in the early afternoon as ambulances attempted to reach the scene.

A government medical official, Adham Abu Salmiyya, denied that anyone was injured in the attack.

The armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said its members clashed with Israeli forces near the Kisufim gate east of Khan Younis after shooting an Israeli soldier. leading to the aerial raid.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that aerial vehicles struck a building in central Gaza "where armed militants were hiding. They were suspected of planning to fire at IDF forces and attempting to plant an explosive device earlier today."

A clash took place Wednesday in the same area, but no one was injured.

In Zikkim, an Israeli kibbutz located several hundred meters from the northernmost part of the border between Israel and Gaza, two bullets fired from Gaza slammed into an industrial area causing damage but not injuries, a police spokesman said.

"The shots were fired from the Gaza Strip and hit a building and a vehicle in Kibbutz Zikkim," Micky Rosenfeld said.

A correspondent at the scene said the bullets had hit an industrial area of the kibbutz, with one ricocheting off the pavement and into a car windscreen, and the second hitting a mattress factory.

The kibbutz security officer identified the bullets as being 0.50 caliber.

Rosenfeld said there was "no chance" the machine gun fire had originated from anywhere other than Gaza.

The Israeli army could not immediately confirm any cross-border machine gun fire.

In the Negev, an Israeli air force F-16 crashed while on a routine training flight, the military said, adding that its two-man crew were missing.

Large forces were carrying out search and rescue in the area of the Ramon Crater looking for the pilot and navigator, an army spokeswoman said.

The accident occurred on Wednesday evening, but the military censor barred publication of the news until the families of the crew had been notified, standard practice in Israel.


AFP contributed to this report.