Hamas attack on Israeli beach settlement repelled
The militant Palestinian group said it was the first of “earthshaking operations to come”.
But it was not the success that planners had hoped for. Three armed Palestinians in wetsuits and flippers emerged from the Mediterranean and fired shots at the Tel Katifa settlement. Two attackers were killed and a third was wounded and fled.
Islamic militant group Hamas, which has threatened to carry out attacks on Israelis to avenge the assassination of its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a farewell video, two attackers posed in their wetsuits with oxygen tanks strapped to their backs and facemasks pulled above their foreheads.
The video also contained footage of a training session in which two men charged toward a rocky cliff, firing assault rifles.
The assailants came ashore under cover of darkness and from the beach fired assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades toward the Israeli army post guarding the settlement. Soldiers returned fire.
A Tel Katifa resident Ari Odes said he and his wife were driving toward the settlement when they heard shooting. Moments later, he saw the attacker on the road, aiming at the car.
“I pulled my head down and tried to aim the wheel so as to run him over but he jumped onto the shoulder of the road and I drove into the settlement,” Odes said.
An Israeli army officer said the Israeli navy spotted three men swimming towards the beach and that two approached the settlement. A third man was wounded and footsteps indicated he fled into the sea, said the officer.
Soldiers found rocket- propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles and explosives on the beach, along with flippers. The military believes the attackers were trying to build a bomb on the beach for use in an attack on the settlement, she said.
Tensions have increased significantly since Israel assassinated Yassin on Monday. In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian during a brief clash with about a dozen youths hurling stones near the Rachel’s tomb holy site.
Thousands of Hamas supporters marched in the West Bank towns of Nablus and Ramallah, threatening revenge. In Nablus, the protest was led by about 200 men in masks and military-style dress.
In the nearby Balata refugee camp, a Palestinian militant was killed when a car he was driving exploded. Palestinian security officials said the car carried explosives that apparently blew up prematurely. The blast killed Ahmed al-Abed of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.
At the UN, the US vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israel for the assassination. The US ambassador complained that the text did not mention Hamas attacks against Israelis.
Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said the veto will be seen by Israel “as an encouragement to continue the path of violence, escalation, assassination and reoccupation.”
At Friday noon prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, the cleric harshly attacked the US. “The US is not the sponsor of peace, it is the sponsor of international terrorism, and this veto is a green light to continue the assassinations,” said Yousef Abu Sneineh.
Israel’s tightened security has foiled several attacks in recent days. On Wednesday, soldiers stopped a 16-year-old Palestinian youth, Hussam Abdo, with a bomb vest strapped to his body at a crowded West Bank checkpoint.
Abdo remained in Israeli custody yesterday, but military sources said he might be released in coming days.
Three of his teenage friends have also been taken into custody, their parents said today.
One of them is a cousin of 16-year-old Sabih Abu Saud who became the youngest Palestinian suicide bomber when he blew himself up in November.
The Al Aqsa group, which recruited Abu Saud, denied any links to Hussam Abdo whose family said was easily manipulated.
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