Israeli fire kills 2 in Gaza after blast wounds soldiers

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian teenagers in the Gaza Strip, medical sources said Sunday, as tensions rose after an apparent bomb attack that wounded several Israeli soldiers on the enclave’s border.

The Saturday explosion and ensuing Israeli air strikes marked one of the most serious escalations in the Hamas-ruled territory since the Islamist movement and Israel fought a war in 2014.

Israel’s army said it attacked “18 terror targets belonging to the Hamas terror organisation” in two waves of air strikes. “Eight targets were attacked in a military compound near Deir el Balah, which belongs to the Hamas terror organisation, including weapon-manufacturing and training infrastructures,” it said in a statement.

Earlier the army said fighter jets had targeted “six military targets in Gaza belonging to Hamas, including: a terror tunnel in the Zaytun area and military compounds near Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis”.Two Palestinians were injured in air strikes which hit three bases belonging to Hamas in the east of the blockaded Gaza enclave, Palestinian sources said.

Speaking at a security conference in Munich late Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had called the border blast “very serious” and pledged to “respond appropriately”. According to witnesses, the two dead Palestinians were shot by Israeli forces near the border on Saturday.

They were identified by the Gaza health ministry as Salam Sabah and Abdullah Abu Sheikha, both 17, who were killed east of Rafah in the south of the enclave. They were to be buried later on Sunday. The Israeli army said that its forces had fired “warning shots” at a number of Palestinians approaching the border fence “in a suspicious manner”.