A spokeman of the Palestinian Resistance Committees on Wednesday threatened revenge for the Israel Air Force strike that killed one of its top militants early in the evening. „We are ready to respond,” PRC spokesman Mohammad Abad al-Gral said, „and the response will be hard and painful.” He added that the PRC is committed to maintaining the ceasefire, but reserves the right to avenge attacks on its members. The Israel Air Force fired a missile at a car carrying Palestinian militants after nightfall on Wednesday, killing one senior figure and wounding six other people, Palestinian medical officials said. The air strike killed Mohammad Arkan, a senior member of the PRC, a Fatah-affiliated group active in southern Gaza. According to Palestinian sources, at least six other people were wounded in the air strike. One of them is in critical condition and two others were seriously wounded. Three bystanders were also wounded. The Israel Defense Forces said Akran was responsible for the attack on the Girit outpost last June, prior to Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, in which one IDF soldier was killed. On Tuesday, Israeli officials said targeted killings of militants and renewed air strikes in Gaza were options being considered in the wake of the Netanya terror bombing two days ago that killed five Israeli civilians. These strikes were expect to focus on Islamic Jihad, the group that carried out the attack outside the Netanya mall. On Wednesday morning, the PRC and Islamic Jihad issued a joint statement warning the Palestinian Authority against arrests of Jihad and Fatah members involved in terror acts. Following the Netanya bombing, the PA began arresting active militants. The missile struck the white Subaru shortly after nightfall in the southern town of Rafah, said Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian Health Ministry official, as it rounded a bend in the road. The Popular Resistance Committees, established at the beginning of the intifada, is comprised of former officers in the Palestinian Authority security services. Over the past several months, the committees have become the most extreme element of Fatah. In a number of instances, Popular Resistance Committees members fired mortar shells and Qassam rockets into Israel on behalf of other organizations such as Hamas. Gaza clans battle it out In a separate earlier incident, a woman was killed and several Palestinians were wounded in a gunbattle between two rival clans in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, medics and witnesses said. The violence erupted after Palestinian security forces and militant fleaders failed to resolve a dispute that led to the slayings of five Palestinians in fighting four days ago between the same clans in the Gaza town of Beit Hanun. Witnesses said the woman killed was from a different family than those involved in the fighting, and that she was shot dead in the crossfire. Several other people were wounded, medics said. A police official said Palestinian security forces deployed in the area after the shootings to restore calm. The heads of both feuding families later „agreed to stop these regrettable incidents,” the official said.
BPI-info
BPI-info
