Blast kills Islamic Jihad militant in Gaza
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JERUSALEM: A senior military commander of the radical Islamic Jihad movement was killed Friday night along with at least five others as a powerful explosion destroyed his house, but the Israeli military denied having anything to do with the blast.
The three-story house of Ayman Atallah Fayed was destroyed and six nearby homes damaged in the crowded Al Bureij refugee camp, Palestinian witnesses said. As many as 40 people were wounded, nine of them critically, according to Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a Gazan Health Ministry official, and more casualties were being evacuated.
Abu Ahmed, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, accused Israel of a "Zionist massacre" from an airstrike, but an Israeli military spokeswoman flatly denied that Israel was responsible for the explosion. "There was no attack in the Gaza Strip," said the spokeswoman.
"The IDF did not attack tonight in the Gaza Strip," she said, using the initials for the Israeli Defense Forces.
Local Hamas police officers told The Associated Press that the cause of the blast was not clear. Islamic Jihad is among the groups that launch crudely made rockets at Israel from Gaza, and Palestinians speculated that an arms cache exploded.
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Separately, just before dawn Friday, masked gunmen attacked the Gaza City premises of the YMCA and blew up its 8,000-volume library, according to Eissa Saba, the center's director. A second bomb was defused. A dozen gunmen overpowered two security guards and brought them to northern Gaza, where they were later released.
It was the latest attack on institutions associated with Christianity, attacks condemned by Hamas, Fatah and local nongovernmental organizations like the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. About 3,500 Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, live in the Gaza Strip.
Situation is 'grim,' UN saysThe eight-month closure of Gaza has created "grim and miserable" conditions that deprive Gazans of their basic dignity, The Associated Press quoted the United Nation's top humanitarian affairs official as saying during a visit Friday.
John Holmes, UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs , toured Gaza's largest hospital, speaking with dialysis patients and inspecting the neonatal unit, and then visited an industrial zone that once employed 1,800 Palestinians but has been idled by the border closure.
Israel and Egypt severely restricted access to Gaza after the Islamic militants seized the territory by force in June. Since then, only a few dozen trucks carrying food, medicine and other basic supplies have been permitted into Gaza each day, while most exports are banned.
The closure has driven up poverty and unemployment, and the UN says some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people now receive some food aid.
"All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled," Holmes said.
The extent of suffering in Gaza has been a subject of dispute. Palestinians and human rights groups say hardship is widespread, while Israeli government officials have accused Hamas of trying to manufacture a humanitarian crisis for political gain.
It was Holmes's first visit to Gaza as humanitarian affairs chief, part of a four-day trip that also includes a stop in the Israeli town of Sderot, often a target of rocket fire from Gaza.
"I have been shocked by the grim and miserable things I have seen and heard about," he said of his tour of Gaza.
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