Rockets pound Israel after air raid kills five in Gaza

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Rockets pound Israel after air raid kills five in Gaza

AFP – 18 minutes ago

An Israeli air raid killed five Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip on

Saturday, prompting a barrage of retaliatory rocket fire which wounded one

Israeli, officials said.

Adham Abu Selmiya, spokesman for Gaza's emergency services, said that five

members of the Al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad's armed wing, were killed and

three critically wounded in the Israeli attack.

An Israeli military spokesman told AFP that the air force fired on a " group of

terrorists preparing to fire long-range rockets " and that the attack had

" prevented the attempted firing. "

The Al-Quds Brigades confirmed that five of its members, including a commander

it named as Ahmed al-Sheikh Khalil, were killed in the strike on its training

camp near the southern city of Rafah.

The group immediately vowed revenge for the air raid, the worst such incident

since a tacit ceasefire was agreed between Gaza Palestinian militants and Israel

in late August.

" This attack is a crime that will not go unpunished, " a statement said. " The

Zionist enemy should expect to pay a high price. "

The reprisal attacks apparently came at around sunset when according to police

five rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, with one

wounding an Israeli and another slamming into a community centre.

The targets of the rocket attacks were the city of Ashdod, 35 kilometres (22

miles) from the Gaza border and the nearby town of Gan Yavneh, police

spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

" One hit Gan Yavneh ... where a person was lightly wounded (by shrapnel), " Samri

told AFP.

" A second hit and damaged a community centre in Ashdod. There was a third in

Ashdod and police are searching to find where it landed, " she said.

A fourth rocket fell elsewhere in southern Israel, in open ground nearer to Gaza

and another was fired " in the general direction " of the city of Beersheeva, in

the Negev desert, but appeared to have fallen on open ground, police said.

A statement from the Al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for the fire.

Al-Quds spokesman Abu Ahmed accused Israel of carrying out the raid in order to

heighten tensions so it could renege on freeing 550 Palestinian prisoners agreed

as part of a prisoner-swap deal with Gaza rulers Hamas for the liberation of

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israel released 477 prisoners in exchange for Shalit earlier this month and is

due to free the other 550 within two months.

A spokesman for Hamas's Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said other militant groups

were mulling their response.

" The occupation is completely responsible for the crime in Rafah and all of the

resistance factions cannot leave the shedding of our martyrs' blood unanswered, "

spokesman Abu Obeida said. " We shall discuss the answer to this crime. "

The Israeli military spokesman said the men targeted on Saturday had also been

responsible for firing a Grad rocket into Israel on Wednesday that hit near

Ashdod.

The Israeli air force carried out three raids on the Gaza Strip Thursday in

retaliation for that attack, witnesses said.

Those raids targeted areas east and west of Khan Yunis in the south of the

Strip, and a base of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades was hit, they said.

An Israeli army spokesman said of those strikes that aircraft had " attacked

three terrorist sites in the Gaza Strip as well as an arms factory in the south

of the territory. "