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| By Israel Insider staff December 18, 2007 |
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Ten Islamic Jihad operatives were killed overnight Monday and early Tuesday as the IDF escalated up counter-terror operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the latest operation, soldiers killed four members of the group's Al-Quds Brigades during a gunfight in Jabalya, in the northern Gaza Strip. The IDF said the target was a rocket-firing cell.
Palestinians reported that the brigades' Jenin commander, Tarik Abu-Ra'ali, was killed during an exchange of fire with an IDF force in Kabatiya. The IDF said that soldiers returned fire after being attacked.
Overnight Monday, five Islamic Jihad members were killed in IAF strikes. The target of the first IAF strike was Majed Harazin, a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist in charge of Kassam rocket squads that had been firing at Israel, the IDF said. Harazin rarely traveled in vehicles for fear of an Israeli air strike and had been on Israel's wanted list for nine years, Palestinian sources said.
Gunfire erupted throughout Gaza after Harazin's death was announced by Islamic Jihad over loudspeakers from mosques. An Islamic Jihad official called his death a serious blow to the group.
Islamic Jihad supporters gathered around the morgue and pledged revenge. "The blood of our comrades will be the fuel for the rockets that will bring death and destruction to the Zionists," another Islamic Jihad spokesman, Abu Hamza, told The Associated Press.
Another terrorist was killed and a third critically wounded in that strike. In a second airstrike, shortly before midnight, the IDF said aircraft hit a cell about to fire rockets at Israel. The leader of the cell -- master rocket maker Karim al-Dahdouh -- and two other terrorists died.
Islamic Jihad was not pleased about the waves of IDF actions, threatening in an email to the media that it would retaliate for its losses with suicide attacks inside Israel, warning of "a wave of martyrdom operations.
Monday night's airstrikes came hours after Defense Minister Ehud Barak told residents of Sderot that the IDF would step up its operations to stop Kassam rocket attacks. |
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