Israeli airstrike kills 14 at Hamas training camp

ISRAELI helicopters attacked a Hamas training camp in Gaza City early yesterday, killing at least 14 people in the deadliest air strike on Palestinian militants in four years.

The attack came a week after Hamas suicide bombers blew up two buses in the Israeli city of Beersheba, killing 16 people.

In an unusually strong statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia warned that that airstrike would bring Hamas retaliation, which he said would be “justified”.

“No crime goes unpunished,” Mr Qureia said at a meeting of the Palestinian Cabinet. “For sure there will be retaliation and the retaliation will be justified if it happens.”

Hamas vowed revenge for yesterday’s air strike and hours later Palestinians fired mortar rounds and home-made rockets at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and Israeli towns bordering the coastal area.

One Israeli in the border town of Sderot was lightly wounded in a rocket attack, rescue officials said.

The Israeli army said it struck a camp Hamas used to train militants in firing mortars and rockets. In the past month, Hamas assembled a large bomb and a suicide bomber’s explosives belt at the training camp, the army added.

In Gaza, children stayed home from school yesterday and shops remained closed in a sign of mourning. Black smoke billowed over the city as students burned tyres at spontaneous demonstrations.

At least five helicopter missiles pounded the Hamas camp in the Shajaiyeh section of Gaza City shortly after midnight.

There was pandemonium at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital as casualties arrived in ambulances and cars. Blood-spattered Palestinians carried dead and wounded into the emergency room, while others went straight to the morgue carrying plastic bags with body parts.

Hundreds of angry Palestinians, many of them members of the Hamas military wing with blood on their clothes, gathered outside, shouting “Revenge, revenge.”

Palestinian officials said all 14 of the dead were Hamas members, although only 11 had been identified by midmorning.

The Hamas military wing said Israel had struck a “scouts camp where a group of fighters was training.”