Gaza terrorists fired rockets at the southern city of Arad on Sunday, the first such attack since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.
By: TPS Staff
The terrorist groups have been broadening their scope of fire since commencing their attack on Israel on Saturday morning. The range to Arad from Gaza is greater than that from Gaza to Tel Aviv.
Ahmad Khudri, responsible for transferring money from Iran to terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, was killed in an Israeli Air Force (IAF) Strike on Sunday, the IDF announced.
New information emerging in the last hours casts serious doubt on Hamas’ claim that a Gazan woman and her baby daughter were killed in an Israeli Air Force strike in Gaza city on Saturday night.
A woman in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night and her toddler baby were reportedly killed, with Gazan sources identifying the victims as 14-month-old Saba Mahmoud Abu ‘Arar and her pregnant mother Falastin.
Hamas claims she was killed by an Israeli strike, but the IDF is saying she was killed by terrorist activity in the area.
However, as the hours pass it is becoming clear that Hamas may be lying about the entire incident.
The Hamas-controlled Minister of Health in Gaza is now saying that it misstated that a mother and daughter had been killed, and instead a toddler has in fact died, but her mother is alive.
The Health Ministry told TPS that another woman named Falastin Abu ‘Arar was killed in the attack, and that she too was pregnant.
The woman killed may have been the baby’s aunt and not her mother.
The Hamas’ confused statement generated rumors on social media, including one that says that the baby died of chemicals and not by an explosion.
The IDF stated Sunday afternoon that “Palestinian weapons caused the tragic death of a mother in Gaza and her baby.”
“Hamas blamed Israel. Journalists amplified the lie. Our assessment indicates that the incident had nothing to do with IDF strikes,” it underscored.
Earlier on, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee stated on Twitter that “according to indications the baby and her mother died as a result of the terrorist activities of Palestinian terrorists and not as a result of an Israeli strike.”
Pictures “clearly show the launching of rockets from crowded areas,” he said.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry stated that Islamic Jihad and Hamas are committing a double war crime by intentionally targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind the local civilian population.
Ahmad Khudri, responsible for transferring money from Iran to terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, was killed in an Israeli Air Force (IAF) Strike on Sunday, the IDF announced.
The IDF stated that Khudri, 34, was a money changer who transferred large sums of money from the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
Iran provides vast support to Palestinian terror organizations, including Hamas which rules Gaza, as part of its support of a global Islamic terror network.
Islamic Jihad’s Quds Brigades receives some $70 million directly from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). The Quds Brigade was reorganized by Qassem Suleimani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force.
Khudri’s company was previously been designated as a terror entity.
“Khudari’s financial activity, which spearheaded Iran’s activity in the Gaza Strip, has contributed significantly to the promotion of terrorist activity and the military buildup of terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF stated.
“The IDF and the General Security Service will continue to operate to thwart and disrupt Iran’s attempts to promote terrorist activity from the Gaza Strip by funding terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” it added.
At least 14 terrorists have been killed in IAF strikes in the past 24 hours, while Khudri’s elimination appears to the first targeted assassination.
Israeli residents throughout the south have been under constant attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who have been launching rockets at cities and towns since Saturday morning.
Schools have been shut down, work has been limited, and Israel’s citizens are again facing a reality in which their homes have become a battleground.
Shimon Salomon, director of the Kfar Silver Youth Village and a former Member of Knesset, described a frightening situation in which explosions are continuously heard, caused by incoming rockets and their interception by the Iron Dome defense system.
“It’s unbearable, the house is shaking,” Salomon told TPS.
Some 200 students were present at the youth village on Saturday morning when the Gaza-based terrorists fired the first barrage at Israel. A rocket exploded at the entrance of the village, just dozens of yards away from the students, who had just finished their breakfast.
The students, many of whom had experienced previous attacks, ran for shelter.
“It’s not a simple situation, there is a lot of stress,” Salomon shared, noting that several of the students are new immigrants and are not used to such extreme incidents.
He said that the students have yet to exhibit anomalous or irregular behavior following the latest attacks, but that previous incidents did see students fainting or showing other signs of distress.
The students undergo training for such situations and receive counsel and treatment when needed to address the strain they experience during these traumatizing events.
The majority of the students were sent home Sunday morning, while some 80, who do not have families in Israel, stayed behind, close to shelters.
“It’s a maddening thought,” Salomon said. Israel will mark its Memorial Day on Wednesday and celebrate its Independence Day on Thursday, and yet “we sit here like ducks, waiting at home. This thought does not leave me.”
He called on the government to deal the terror groups a significant blow.
“My children are constantly crying, it’s an intolerable situation. Why should the children grow up shadowed by such a threat?” he said.
Sapir Daddon, a university student from Kiryat Gat, encountered the rocket fire late on Saturday. She said she had heard the rocket explosions earlier in the day, but the rockets fell in her city only later on.
Two rockets hit the city, seriously wounding an 80-year-old woman and hitting another house, in which no one was injured. She lives only three minutes away from that home.
She said she took shelter in the building stairway during the attacks because her house does not have a safe-room. The family whose home took a direct hit was not sure if to heed the alarm, but the mother urged the family to enter the shelter and saved their lives.
Daddon, 25 years old, has essentially grown up into this reality of violence. She has been experiencing such attacks from Gaza since 2012. She says this has conditioned her to develop a sort of callousness, while the constant fear still remains.
Relating to the upcoming holidays, she said it was an “inconceivable” situation, a sense of collision between the holidays’ solemnity and the insanity generated by the rocket fire.
“I hope everything settles beforehand,” she said. (Tazpit Press Service)
