Israeli army kills top Islamic Jihad militant
The Israeli army fired missiles at a car in Gaza City today, killing Islamic Jihad’s most senior militant and a woman and her five-year-old son, Palestinian officials and relatives said.
Initially, Palestinian hospital officials said the two dead were Hamas militants, but later the group denied their members had been killed.
Relatives of Mohammed Dadouh, 40, described by Gazans as Islamic Jihad’s most senior military commander, confirmed he had been targeted and killed in the airstrike.
Another woman, Hanan Aman, who was in a taxi close behind Dadouh’s jeep with her children, was killed along with her five-year-old son. Aman’s daughter, aged 7, was critically wounded in the attack along with five other people.
The army said Dadouh was responsible for firing homemade rockets and longer-range Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns.
Dozens of Islamic Jihad activists gathered at the hospital on Friday. Some gunmen fired in the air, while other people cried.
“Today we have lost another hero, but God willing the Israeli government will drink the same bitter drink that Dadouh’s family and our people have been swallowing for a long time,” said Abu Ahmed, the spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s military wing.
“The blood and the flesh of our leader today is the fuel for the resistance vehicle. There will be no limitations and no borders for our coming reprisal. All possible means of resistance will be used,” Abu Ahmed said.
Dadouh’s brother was killed two months ago when a booby-trapped car blew up in Gaza.
Earlier today, an apparent attempt to assassinate Gaza’s intelligence chief with a bomb that ripped through the lift shaft of a Gaza security building raised tensions between President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and the Islamic Hamas group.
Abbas’ security forces hinted that Hamas was behind the second attempt to assassinate Tareq Abu Rajab, while the sides vie for security control in the Gaza Strip and rival gunmen patrol the streets.
Abu Rajab, the Palestinian intelligence chief and a key ally of the moderate Abbas, was seriously wounded in the bomb blast at his Gaza headquarters.
Today’s blast was the latest incident to raise tensions in Gaza, where Hamas ordered its newly formed 3,000-strong militia to take to the streets this week in blatant disregard for Abbas’ opposition
The new Hamas militia and Abbas’ Fatah-run security forces have been in a tense standoff in the past few days, sometimes erupting into street gunfights that some analysts believe is the beginning of a broader civil war.
