Posted on 03/14/2004 7:48:54 PM PST by anotherview
Last Update: 15/03/2004 04:06
IAF strike in Gaza City targets two Hamas weapons factories
By Aluf Benn, Baruch Kra and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents and Haaretz Service
The Israel Defense Forces spokesman early Monday confirmed that air force helicopters carried out strikes against targets in Gaza City, Israel Radio reported. The army said two buildings were targeted, which had been used by Hamas to manufacture arms and Qassam rockets, as well as mortar shells. The buildings were located in the Zeitun and Nasser neighborhoods of the city.
Palestinian officers searching through the rubble of a Gaza City Hamas weapons factory destroyed in an IAF strike early Monday. (AP)
Palestinian witnesses said one man was wounded in the strike. Parts of the city were under a power blackout after the helicopters damaged electric infrastructure.
The military response was devised on Sunday night in a meeting between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon. Sharon will speak on Monday with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is to return to the country from a trip to the U.S.; the two will decide whether further measures need to be added to the plan formulated on Sunday night.
Ten people were killed and 16 were injured, eight of them seriously, in the double suicide bombing late Sunday afternoon at the Ashdod port.
Top: Rescue workers evacuating a person wounded at the Ashdod Port, where two suicide bombers blew themselves up Sunday. (Limor Edri)
The attack occurred around 4:30 P.M. Originally reports described the first explosion as a work accident involving gas containers at the site. Then, a few minutes later, a second explosion ripped through a caravan some 100 meters from the first blast; the second explosion occurred just outside of the port itself. The blasts killed eight people, not including the two dead terrorists.
Preliminary investigations established that the first terrorist got inside the port and blow himself up close to a group of workers standing next to a machine repair workshop. The explosion blew the roof off the workshop, and five workers were killed immediately.
A few moments later, the second suicide terrorist detonated his bomb on the sidewalk in a storage and refrigeration area adjacent to the port. The blast destroyed a trailer that held an office - three office workers were killed, and the terrorist's body landed in the middle of the street.
For hours after the blasts, sappers and security personnel combed the area, looking for additional bombs or terrorists.
Policemen patrolled crowded areas in Ashdod, and the city was kept on high alert.
For some time after the bombings, police spokesmen refrained from saying that the calamity was a double terror attack. One of the reasons for their reticence was that the scenes of the bombings did not resemble those of other suicide attacks.
"There's no doubt that this is different from what we are used to," said the police Southern District commander, Major General Moshe Karadi. "No electrical wires nor switches were found at the scene of the attacks; and there was a relatively small quantity of shrapnel. So it was hard for us to determine that this was the scene of a terror attack."
"The force of the explosions was unusually intense, and it's possible that this was a new, more sophisticated type of bomb, one which we haven't seen before," Karadi said.
Police Commissioner Shlomo Aharonishki, who arrived on the scene, noted that the port constituted a strategic target. "Now we'll have to decide how to deploy forces at this harbor and other strategic sites in the state," Aharonishki said. He added that the police will have to investigate how the terrorists managed to penetrate the port, "which is guarded and checked all the time."
Aharonishki ordered the police's Southern District to conduct an investigation together with Ashdod port authorities to determine how the two teenage suicide bombers managed to enter the area. Any flaws that are uncovered by this investigation must be corrected at once, Aharonishki said.
Aharonishki has the police on a level three alert on Monday, meaning that there will be stepped up deployments in city centers and in border areas. Security deployments for public transportation - buses and trains - are also to be beefed up.
The perpetrators of the attack were identified as two 18-year-olds, Nabil Massoud and Mahmoud Salem, from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The pair apparently slipped through the Gaza perimeter fence - an unprecedented occurrence. The fact that the two got through the fence, and that they attacked a strategic target, prompted both Israeli security officials and spokesmen from militant Palestinian groups to regard Sunday's event as a new type of attack.
Sharon will speak on Monday in the Knesset, in a debate on the separation plan that was initiated by the opposition parties. His speech is unlikely to contain surprises, sources said.
In light of this latest atrocity it should be very interesting to see what the Prime Minister pulls out this time.
Those buildings will never be able to hurt anyone again.
And for God's sake, disavow Oslo as a disaster and a giant trap.
Israel must take the lead in undoing Oslo so that international law can once again be respected for all equally.
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