At Least One Palestinian Killed in Israeli Air Strikes on Gaza

14/06/2003| IslamWeb

Israel killed a Hamas member and wounded dozens of other Palestinians in two helicopter strikes on Gaza City, while at the same time reportedly offering a truce with Palestinian militants. Among the 26 wounded were eight children under the age of 10, said medical sources, as helicopter gunships fired missiles at the car of the member of the radical Islamic movement Hamas in the city's eastern Al-Sabra district. Hamas sources identified the dead man as Adel al-Lidawi, 26. Lidawi's death, along with the earlier death of an Israeli in the northern West Bank, brought to 3,343 the number of people killed since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, according to an AFP count. More than 60 of the deaths have come since a US-Israeli-Palestinian summit in Jordan on June 4 aimed at kickstarting implementation of an international roadmap for peace that is rejected by Hamas and other Palestinian hardliners. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to AFP. The Israeli army, meanwhile, said its target in Gaza City was a group of militants preparing to fire homemade Qassam rockets. The southern Israeli town of Sderot was targeted three times, without causing injury, in the previous 24 hours by the home-made rockets which are named after the military wing of Hamas. But Hamas insisted Lidawi was a civilian member of the organisation and not involved in military operations. In Israel's second helicopter raid -- and the seventh on the Gaza Strip in four days --, the deserted house of a suspected Hamas member in Gaza City was badly damaged, Palestinian sources said, without reporting further casualties. The army said it targeted a weapons workshop for building Qassam rockets. A top aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, delivered a ceasefire proposal for a halt in its war against Palestinian militants, a senior Palestinian source said. Under the terms of the ceasefire, initially to last three days, Israel would stop all attempts to assassinate Palestinian militants in exchange for an agreement by Hamas to halt all attacks on Israel, the source said. Following the three-day period, the truce would be renewed on a daily basis while Israel and the Palestinians discuss plans for a comprehensive ceasefire, he said. The offer, delivered by Sharon's chief of staff Dov Weisglass to Palestinian finance minister Salam Fayad, was discussed late Friday at a meeting between Arafat and his security chiefs, he added. The meeting is to be continued on Saturday. **PHOTO CAPTION*** An unidentified relative carries a child wounded by shrapnel, from an Israeli helicopter missile, to the treatment room at the Shifa hospital in Gaza city Friday, June 13, 2003. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)