Six Palestinians killed by Israeli air strikes on Gaza Strip

Date: 17 / 06 / 2008  Time:  15:48
Gaza - Ma'an –

Six Palestinians were killed in three Israeli air strikes on civilian cars in the southern and central Gaza Strip on Tuesday afternoon.

Witnesses said the first attack targeted a jeep near the town of Al-Qarara, north of the city of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, killing five and injuring others.

The director of the ambulance and emergency department in the Palestinian Health Ministry, Mu'awiya Hassanain, said the bodies arrived in "charred pieces" at the hospital.

Meanwhile, a second air strike targeted another jeep near the Mediterranean coast in Dair Al-Balah governorate in the central Gaza Strip, killing one and injuring another.

The third attack targeted a Hyundai on Al-Birka street in the city of Dair Al-Balah, less than half an hour after the other attacks. Medical sources confirmed that three people were wounded in the raid, one of them seriously.

Israeli fire has killed ten people in Gaza in less than two days. Israeli occupation ground forces killed four Palestinian fighters on Monday.

 Israeli air strikes kill five Palestinians and wound five others in Gaza

[ 17/06/2008 - 05:11 PM ]

KHAN YOUNIS, (PIC)--

Five Palestinians were killed, four of them reportedly affiliated with the Army of Islam, and five others were wounded following two Israeli aerial attacks carried out Tuesday afternoon on two cars in southern and central Gaza Strip.

Palestinian eyewitnesses in Khan Younis city where the first strike took place told the PIC reporter that an Israeli military drone fired one air-to-ground missile on a car traveling at the crossroads of Al-Qarara, north of the city, which resulted in the death of four Palestinians in the car and one passerby and the injury of three others.

Medical sources also told the PIC reporter that the victims were not yet identified because their bodies were charred and mutilated beyond recognition.

The second air strike targeted a car in the Birka area in Dair Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, which led to the injury of two Palestinians, also thought to be affiliated with the Army of Islam. The Israeli warplane chased the two wounded Palestinian citizens who abandoned the car after the strike and fired another missile at them.

Palestinian local sources reported that the two citizens survived but were seriously wounded and transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Dair Al-Balah.

In light of this brutal aggression, the Hamas Movement underlined Tuesday that the Israeli occupation uses two faces before the world, one wants a truce to win the public opinion and the other is thirsty for blood-shedding and destruction.

In an exclusive statement to the PIC, Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said that Israel aims by the assassination of five Palestinian citizens in Gaza to overthrow the Movement, destroy its government and to reply with its usual well-known bloody message to the truce efforts.

Barhoum called on Egypt in its capacity as the truce mediator to respond to the Israeli crimes committed today through moving immediately to open the Rafah border crossing for the transfer of the wounded and to pressure the Israeli occupation to stop its ongoing criminal operations in Gaza