Itongadol.-A 10-year-old Palestinian boy was killed along the Gazan border late Wednesday, with a Hamas official and an eyewitness accusing Israel, but the army said it had no knowledge of such an incident.
Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, said the boy died when Israeli troops fired across the border east of Khan Younis in eastern Gaza.
“Abdullah al-Naseef, 10, was killed by (Israeli) occupation fire close to his house in the Qarara municipality, near Khan Younis,” he said.
An eyewitness said the Israeli army opened fire from a military base near Kissufim along the border.
But an Israeli army spokeswoman said she had no information on any firing across the border.
“We are not aware of any incident,” she said.
On Tuesday night Palestinian officials said Israeli forces shot dead a 20-year-old Palestinian man in East Jerusalem. Israeli officials said they had shot at a man who was among a group who threw Molotov cocktails at them “while greatly endangering the soldiers’ lives.”
Tensions along the Gaza border have risen recently. Last week saw several projectile launched into Israel from the Hamas-run enclave. On Wednesday, a rocket hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot and exploded in the middle of a street, causing some damage to the road, cars and nearby homes. Three people were hospitalized after suffering anxiety attacks.
In response, the IDF struck Hamas targets, first with tank fire and then with a series of airstrikes in Gaza, targeting “key Hamas strategic infrastructure,” according to a military official.
On Thursday, an IDF tank hit a Hamas outpost in the southern Gaza Strip in response to a mortar shell fired at southern Israel earlier in the day. Reports within the Gaza Strip also indicated that Israeli forces struck a site in central Gaza, east of the Bureij refugee camp, though that was not immediately confirmed by the IDF.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Thursday that while Israel does not want to spark a war with Hamas, it will answer every attack from the Gaza Strip with a “forceful response.”
Though neither attack was believed to have been carried out by Hamas, Israel has said that Hamas ultimately “bears responsibility for every terror incident emanating from” the Gaza Strip.
After the Israeli strikes Hamas reportedly sent a message to Israel calling for calm and saying the terrorist group was not interested in a further escalation of tensions.