GAZA (PIC)– Israeli warplanes have unleashed aerial raid at the Mintar crossing point east of Gaza Strip at dawn Tuesday but no casualties were reported in the raid Palestinian and Hebrew sources revealed.
Hebrew media sources quoted spokesman of the IOF troops as saying that the raid targeted a suspected Palestinian tunnel in the area that was prepared to launch armed operations against “Israel”.
“The raid was decided and approved by the political echelon in Israel as part of our war against the infrastructure of terrorism” the spokesman alleged.
The raid comes less that 24 hours of the lethal explosion that rocked a shop inside the 1948-occupied Palestinian city of Um Al-Rashrash (Eilat) Monday where four Israeli settlers were killed and seven others were wounded.
According to the sources Israeli premier Ehud Olmert halted a full-scale military operation against the Strip and decided to concentrate the IOF operations in limited areas.
Palestinian resistance affirmed that the Eilat explosion was a natural response to the relentless IOF troops’ atrocities against the unarmed Palestinian civilians in Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
IOF troops killed almost 5000 Palestinians and wounded tens of thousands others in Gaza Strip and the West Bank over the past five years. More than 11000 prisoners including women and children among other captives were still languishing in Israeli jails in very harsh conditions.
In an unrelated matter IOA decided to extend solitary confinement of jailed Hamas political leader Sheikh Jamal Abu Al-Hayja 50 for the third successive year in the Ashkilon city.
Abu Al-Hayja was accused by the Israeli prosecution of leading the armed wing of Hamas in the West Bank but the Hamas leader denied the accusations. He was sentenced to 9 life-imprisonment terms plus 20 years.
His two sons Abdussalam 22 and Asem 19 are serving a seven-year-imprisonment term and 6-month-administrative detention term respectively.
