Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli helicopter attack on the West Bank city of Bethlehem Tuesday, said reports.
Two Hamas leaders and three others were killed in the attack, which targeted a house they were in while “waiting for a friend who was supposed to be released from an Israeli jail by that time.”
The Israeli army claimed that they were members of a cell that was plotting an attack in Jerusalem.
Al Jazeera satellite channel’s correspondent said that two helicopters fired at least five missiles at the house, killing the five and injuring at least ten, including children.
AFP said 14 were injured, and said one assassinated leader was Omar Saadeh, 42, who was assassinated together with his brother Mohammad, and fellow activist Taher Al Arrouj. The other two were not identified.
Overnight, the Israeli army bombarded Palestinian security posts in Hebron and Jenin, allegedly in retaliation for a suicide attack in Binyamina, north of Tel Aviv, by the Islamic Jihad movement.
The bomber killed himself and two Israeli soldiers, and wounded 11.
Since the September 2000 eruption of the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation, the media has reported that Palestinians have killed over 123 Israelis with weapons ranging from stones and knives to machineguns and car bombs. Israeli military sources have reported well over 600 injuries to Israelis of Jewish descent.
In the same time period, according to the UK newspaper The Guardian, Israeli soldiers and armed Jewish settlers have killed 13 Arab Israelis and 510 Palestinians with weapons ranging from machineguns and tanks to US-made Apache helicopter gunships and F-16s.
According to an Amnesty International, nearly 100 of the Palestinians killed were children. In addition, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society has reported over 14,000 Palestinians wounded.
Jewish author Noam Chomsky, who according to a New York Times Book Review article is “arguably the most important intellectual alive,” has been quoted as saying: “State terrorism is an extreme form of terrorism, generally much worse than individual terrorism because it has the resources of a state behind it.” – Albawaba.com
