Gazans brace for major incursion as Israeli forces enter Jabalia
8 Apr 2008
Gaza ? Ma'an ? Thirty Israeli military vehicles entered the northern Gaza Strip city of Jabalia early on Tuesday morning, stopping 100 meters from a Palestinian residential neighborhood, witnesses said.
Jabalia residents said the Israeli forces have been firing heavily towards the Palestinian houses, but no casualties have yet been reported. The mood in Jabalia is tense, with residents fearing that the vehicles could signal the beginning of a major Israeli incursion.
In late February Israel launched a five-day invasion in Jabalia that left more than 120 Palestinians dead, half of them unarmed civilians.
On Monday, Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian civilians in the Khuza'a area, east of the city of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli troops shot 65-year-old Uthman Abu Rock and then abducted him, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian military groups fired barrages of mortar shells and homemade projectiles at the southern Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.
The military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, the An-Nasser Salah Addin Brigades, said their fighters fired three mortar rounds at Netiv Ha'asara, north of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning.
Separately, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed responsibility for firing two homemade projectiles at the Israeli city of Ashkelon on Tuesday.