Strike comes in response to rocket attacks on southern cities; Palestinian doctors say 2 Islamic Jihad members killed in attack.
By REUTERS, JPOST.COM STAFFIAF airstrike Gaza_311 reuters(photo credit: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters)IAF planes on Saturday attacked a terror cell in the southern Gaza Strip that was involved in firing rockets at Israel.Palestinian doctors reported that two people were killed in the attack on the cell that belonged to the Islamic Jihad.RELATED:Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza explodes near BeershebaIron Dome battery moved south after Gaza-rocket attacks"Hamas is responsible for what takes place in Gaza," the IDF said.Earlier on Saturday, the IAF attacked another Islamic Jihad camp in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a commander of the Palestinian faction and four other terrorists, officials on both sides said.The strike in Rafah followed an unprovoked long-range rocket attack on Israel on Thursday.Islamic Jihad's propaganda wing released a video on the Internet on Saturday showing a mounted multi-rocket launcher. The video is part of a boast by the Iranian-backed terror group that its rocket launching capabilities have improved over recent years. The group's claim that the video was taken from Saturday in Gaza could not be independently confirmed. But the organization has been the recipient of large-scale Iranian support, both military and financial.The Islamic Jihad's leader in Syria, Ramadan Abdullah, recently attended a conference in Iran dedicated to calling for Israel's destruction.
During the conference, Abdullah said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, is following a "plan is a road map to the liberation of the occupied territories," referring to the whole of Israel. The Islamic Jihad has long been Iran's closest proxy in the Palestinian territories.In the past, the organization's leadership described itself as "one of the many fruits on our leader [former Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah] Khomeini's tree."The Islamic Jihad initiated the latest escalation last week, when it fired a long-range rocket deep into Israel, reportedly to mark the assassination of its former leader, Fathi Shkaki, in Malta in 1995.
