Three children were injured by flying glass as Israeli war planes attacked targets in the Gaza Strip overnight, hospital staff, witnesses and Hamas officials said Friday.
The three children, aged two, four and 11, were hit by flying glass in a raid on the Sabra district, in the western part of Gaza City, said Moawiya Hassanein, head of the Palestinian emergency services in Gaza.
The air strikes came after the latest in a series of rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel, when one landed in the city of Ashkelon late Thursday, causing damage but no casualties, said the Israeli army.
Three Israeli air strikes targeted an area west of Khan Yunis, in the southern part of the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas. Two of the missiles hit a guard post of Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
A fourth raid destroyed a workshop in the refugee camp of Nusseirat, in central Gaza.
In two other air raids, Israeli fighters targeted points in the west of Gaza City, completely destroying a small dairy factory in the Sabra district, said witnesses.
The military said in a statement it hit "a weapons manufacturing site in the northern Gaza Strip, a weapons manufacturing site in the central Gaza Strip and two weapons storage facilities in the Southern Gaza Strip."
The attacks were carried out by F16 fighters, the witnesses said.
Israel's armed forces have launched regular air raids on the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, responding to repeated rocket attacks into Israel from Gaza-based militants.
Palestinian militants fired nearly 20 rockets and mortars in to Israel in the last month, according to the army, including one attack that killed a Thai labourer on March 18.
In recent days, Israeli ground forces have also clashed with Palestinian militants along the border with Israel.
The present surge in violence is the worst since the end of the 22-day Israeli assault on the territory launched in December 2008 to halt the rocket attacks that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
© AFP
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It is always the children of Gaza who suffer the most from Israel's disproportionate actions. When will Israel learn that by making these children suffer, she is only creating terrorists of the future. And as for the blockade and water rationing, didn't Gandhi once say 'Poverty is the cruelist form of violence'?
It is very sad and tragic! Though I do not understand that knowing well that Israel will retaliate, why Hamas targets rockets in their territory? Is it a way to portray Israel in bad light by making the ordinary Gazans a victim of Israeli retaliation? Pakistan is doing the same to us in the Attari sector, but Indians do not retaliate making Pakistanis more brazen in their attempts to destabilize India through infiltration of militants, smuggling of fake currency and arms/bombs..where again the common Indian suffers. There can never be a correct way to deal with them...
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