Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Israel targets Hamas training camp

Israeli tanks have shelled a Hamas training camp in the central Gaza Strip killing at least 14 militants and wounding 45 people, witnesses and hospital sources said.

Tanks stationed at a border crossing between Israel and Gaza fired into the outskirts of the town of Shijaia, a stronghold of Hamas, the militant group behind two suicide bombing that killed 16 people on buses in southern Israel last week.

Witnesses said explosions tore through a Hamas training ground after an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen in the area.

Hospital sources said all of the dead were Hamas members but that the wounded included civilians.

An Israeli spokesman said the military had "targeted a training field during trainings of Hamas terrorists".

"The targeted location was known as a gathering field of Hamas terrorists to be trained in the planting and activating of explosive devices, launching of RPG and Qasam rockets and practising infiltration into Israeli communities and military posts," he said in a statement.

Israeli leaders had pledged harsh reprisals, including the resumption of a campaign to assassinate Hamas leaders, in response to the Beersheba bombings, the first suicide attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.

The dead and wounded from the Israeli attack, most of them wearing combat uniforms, were taken to Gaza's Al Shifa hospital where hundreds of Hamas activists, some of the armed and masked, as well as onlookers gathered as the news of the attack spread.

"Vengeance, vengeance", the crowd shouted.

Hamas is one of the main militant groups leading a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis during a nearly four-year-old Palestinian uprising.

"This ugly Israeli crime... will not pass unpunished," Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri told Reuters.

"It is an open war between the Zionists and us."

Reuters/AFP

AS: Another open war between another what else "terrorist"...

# ANTENNA SHARON | 11:47:00 am |