A masked Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant stands with a machine gun during a march in preparation for the rally, Oct. 28, 2010.A masked Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant stands with a machine gun during a march in preparation for the rally, Oct. 28, 2010.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warns: Don't test us, you will only bring more harm to yourselves; this is the third air force attack carried out in broad daylight in recent months.
A senior Islamic Jihad militant was killed Tuesday by an Israel Air Force missile while he was driving a motorcycle in the southern Gaza Strip, according to local Palestinian officials.
Gaza emergency services said that the targeted militant Mohammed A-Najar, 25, was killed immediately and that an additional casualty had been evacuated to hospital for treatment.
Israel Defense Forces sources confirmed the attack, and said that Najar had been planning a terrorist attack within Israeli territory and with rocket-launching cells.
The Islamic Jihad said Najar had previously been wounded in the head
in fighting during the three-week Gaza offensive that Israel launched in late 2008.
It threatened to retaliate and said in a written statement: "All options are open to respond to this assassination crime."
Responding to reports of the strike, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he preferred "not to elaborate" but warned: "I recommend all these groups not to test us. If they continue to
shoot at us, then there will be more strikes on the other side of the border."
This was the third time in recent months that the IDF has carried out a targeted assassination in broad daylight in the Gaza Strip. The two previous targets were members of the Army of Islam.
The fact that Tuesday's attack targeted a member of Islamic Jihad, a militant organization close to Hamas, indicates that the IDF believes groups close to the Gaza rulers have resumed their activities against Israel, despite pledging to show restraint.
Just two days ago, Hamas said it had begun talks with other militant factions in the Gaza Strip to urge them to stop firing rockets at Israel, attacks that have raised Palestinian fears of a new Israeli offensive.
The attack on Tuesday was the third IDF strike on Gaza in less than two days; early Monday, the air force bombed two "terrorist sites", or locations used by radical groups to train militants or as outposts.
The IDF described those strikes as retaliation against a rise in rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants from the coastal enclave.
Also Monday, a 65-year-old Gaza man was shot dead by a soldiers at an Israeli
guard tower on the border, according to Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Adham Abu Salmia.
The IDFsaid soldiers fired warning shots toward a Palestinian who entered the no-go buffer zone between Israel and Gaza. The gunfire did not hit the Palestinian, the IDF said. .
