GAZA (PIC)– The Israeli occupation government on Monday warned that the IOF troops would launch a land blitz on the Gaza Strip within 48 hours if Palestinian resistance missiles fired at Israeli settlements adjacent to the Strip didn’t come to a halt.
However Palestinian residents and local sources affirmed that tens of IOF tanks have been intensively deployed near the Strip’s boundaries for several weeks.
According to eyewitnesses Israeli Apache choppers dropped leaflets written in Arabic warning the Strip’s residents that the IOF troops would sweep the area if the rockets didn’t stop.
The Israeli threat came after the IOF commander of the southern command recommended the launching of a wide-scale military operation in the Strip to “deter the growing military capabilities of the Palestinian resistance factions there”.
In the same context Palestinian security sources revealed that the IOF tanks were seen advancing into the Zaitun suburb east of Gaza city amidst sporadic machinegun shooting.
The IOF troops carried out a number of limited incursions into the northern part of the Strip particularly in Beit Hanon city over the past couple of days.
According to documented reports published by the PA information bureau and legal and human rights organizations more than 5000 Palestinian citizens including hundreds of women and children had been killed with IOF troops’ bullets and artillery shells and tens of thousands others had been wounded since the breakout of the Aqsa intifada in 2000.
On Saturday the IOF troops killed nine Palestinian citizens in the West Bank including 17-year-old schoolgirl and 15-year-old boy among other fatalities.
More than 11000 Palestinian captives including 350 children and 126 women among other prisoners are living in harsh incarceration conditions in Israeli jails many of them for decades.
Palestinian resistance fighters maintained that the missile attacks on the Israeli settlements were “retaliatory” attacks amidst clear Israeli rejection for calm.
Four Palestinian homemade Buraq-2 missiles were unleashed by the Palestinian resistance fighters and slammed into the Israeli settlements of Nahal Oz and Netiv Ha`asara in the 1948-occupied Palestinian Negev desert Sunday night.
Human shields again:
In Nablus city four Palestinian minors were rounded up at dawn Monday after large numbers of IOF troops backed by a number of military vehicles raided the city and the nearby refugee camp of Balata.
A fifth Palestinian boy identified as Mahmoud Ja’areen was arrested at his home in the refugee camp and used by the IOF troops as a human shield for more than three hours during the incursion before releasing him.
