Israeli helicopters and ground-to-ground missiles on Sunday blasted metal works and other plants in the Gaza Strip which the Israeli army said were being used as illegal arms factories.
Helicopters and ground forces fired missiles at three buildings, one of which was located in the Jabalya refugee camp. Haaretz newspaper quoted an Israeli army spokesman as saying the attack was in response to the ongoing firing of mortar shells in recent days.
The Palestinians reported that helicopter gunships fired five missiles at three factories.
According to AFP, the US-made Apache helicopters fired the missiles at two factories and two workshops in Jabalya, just north of Gaza City, followed by a salvo of around eight ground-to-ground missiles.
Local resident Mohammed Abu Warda told the agency that a huge explosion split the night.
"It was a terrible sound. My kids were scared. We heard the sound of helicopters and after that rocketing. The ground-to-ground missiles came from the direction of Beit Hanun," near the administrative boundary with Israel, Abu Warda said.
Riyad Mohammed Massood, 32, the owner of a carpentry shop that was hit in the strike, said: "I was sleeping when it happened at 4:30 in the morning. I heard the bombing, but I didn't see it.
"I lost $9,000," he told AFP.
The workshops were just 100 meters (330 feet) from the Abu Bakr Seddiq mosque in Jabalia, which residents described as the center for the Hamas Islamic resistance movement in the sprawling town just to the north of Gaza City.
Hassan Bassil also found his small factory for painting gas cylinders for cooking blown up by the night-time raid.
The aluminum roofing was blown away when a missile slammed through the factory, then through the steel-door entrance, and then the concrete wall of an office of the wood workshop opposite.
"It's a civilian factory," he said.
His co-owner father said the factory did not belong to any military group. "It's private. It doesn't belong to Hamas or Hizbollah," he said, referring the Lebanese Muslim resistance movement.
The hail of missiles also hit an aluminum production plant, where the rockets destroyed heavy machinery like compressors and casting equipment and the tin roofs were blown away.
Factory managers said the night watchman had been sleeping on a couch in the office of the wood workshop when the missile strike began. The office was scattered with debris, which also covered a blanket lying on the couch.
"When he heard the sound (of the missiles) in Bassil's painting factory, he left the couch and he phoned the owners," said Hesham Iwayny, the manager of a neighboring factory and chairman of the wood industries union in Gaza.
"The Israeli target is to destroy all factories in Gaza because they want buyers not producers," he said.
Over 700 Palestinians and more than 180 Israelis have been killed in the latest Palestinian uprising against 34 years of Israeli military occupation – Albawaba.com
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