Airstrikes Destroy Boats in Gaza Harbor; Official Slain

GAZA CITY, 3 August 2006 — Israeli aircraft rocketed boats in Gaza City’s harbor early yesterday and missiles hit a house in the center of the strip. No injuries were reported, but several boats anchored in the Gaza marina were destroyed, witnesses said, adding they heard “loud explosions.”

The Israeli Army said in a statement that it targeted a vessel used by fighters to smuggle weapons into the strip from Egypt.

No one was injured also in the house rocketed in the central El-Bureij refugee camp, because the home-owner and his family left after receiving an advance warning in a phone call from an Israeli Army officer — a practice used frequently in the past week or two.

The airstrikes are part of an Israeli offensive launched after fighters from the governing Palestinian Hamas movement and two other groups raided a military outpost bordering Gaza and captured an Israeli soldier while killing two others.

At least 160 Palestinians have been killed since the offensive began exactly five weeks ago, the Palestinian Health Ministry said yesterday. The deaths included 30 children and youths aged under 16, the youngest of whom was a seven-month-old baby, it said, adding more than 600 others were wounded. An Israeli soldier was also killed.

Meanwhile, an officer with the Palestinian preventative security force, dominated by loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, was killed yesterday by unknown gunmen in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

Saqer Ismail Anbar, 44, was killed in Khan Younis in the south of the coastal strip.

Late Tuesday, a university professor and member of the ruling Islamist Hamas movement, Saleh Al-Naqah, was wounded by gunmen in Khan Younis.

Violent clashes between supporters of Hamas and Fatah erupted after Hamas swept to power in a shock election victory in late January. The clashes had subsided substantially since the end of June, when warring Palestinian factions adopted a document of “national understanding.”

— With input from agencies

by Hisham Abu Taha, Arab News