HAMAS

Qassam Brigades: We’ve Killed 12 Israeli Soldiers Friday

Mohamad Shmaysani

10/01/2009 On the 15th day of Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip, the Zionist entity killed more than 806 Palestinians and injured more than 3150 others, yet the goal to break the will of the people and the resistance has been futile. The Israel occupation army has been stunned by the Palestinian resistance’s fighting techniques, capabilities and determination. On Saturday morning, the Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance movement carried out an attack against an Israeli army unit north of the Gaza Strip and confirmed its fighters inflicted losses in the unit’s ranks. Israeli occupation army admitted Saturday that there are currently 14 soldiers being hospitalized in Beersheba, after being injured in fighting in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is currently holding an assessment session at his Tel Aviv office together with senior Israeli army officials and the defense establishment. The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas said its armed wing, the Izzeddine Qassam Brigades, killed 12 Israeli special forces soldiers Friday, including eight in an ambush in Beit Lahyia. “I bring the good news to our Palestinian people and our Arab nation that 12 Israeli occupation soldiers have been killed in Friday’s clashes,” Hamas’s politburo member Mohamad Nazzal said Friday night. Nazzal pointed that satellite channels have focused on the eight soldiers killed in the Beit Lahyia ambush, “but there were four other soldiers killed in sniper fire in different locations in the Gaza Strip.” He added that a number of occupation troops were injured in the fighting. The Qassam Brigades have recently shown footage of sniping Israeli soldiers in different locations in Gaza.Abu Ubeida, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades confirmed the Beit Lahyia ambush and the killing of the eight soldiers earlier on Friday adding that a resistance fighter was injured in the attack. Hamas’s toll of Israeli soldiers killed so far has reached some 45 troops and more than a hundred and fifty others injured. Israeli authorities are imposing a total blackout on the course of its ground operation to avoid what they call “the negative effect on the home front.” Yet, under the pressure of Arab and international media, the Zionist army was forced to acknowledge the killing of at least 15 soldiers. Israel bombed a building housing several media offices in Gaza in a clear sign to the Zionist entity’s ire of relaying the massacre being committed in Gaza live on TV screens. In the meantime, the Israeli occupation army said that Palestinian resistance fighters have attacked Ashkelon, Sderot and Beersheva regions alone with 646 rockets since the beginning of the war on the 27th of last December; an average of 45 rockets a day, not to mention at least a dozen other settlements. Five Qassam rockets were fired Saturday from northern Gaza at Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev regional councils. Four Grad-type rockets were fired at Ashkelon just before noon. One of the rockets landed near a four-storey residential building in the city, wounding an Israeli settler. Three other settlers were wounded and 10 people went into shock. Another rocket landed in a courtyard and wounded one settler. Two other rockets landed in an open field and caused no casualties or damage. Two rockets were fired at Sderot. One landed in an open field, but another damaged a road in the city. On Friday, the Qassam Brigades fired rockets at the main Israel Air Force base in Tel Nof, some 45km north of Gaza and 27km south of Tel Aviv. The base serves as a squadron base for fighter jets and helicopters. (This news from Al Manar, Janauary 11, 2009)0