Two Kassams land in Sderot area

None wounded in rocket attack; Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade claims responsibility.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
idf in jenin 298 ap (photo credit: AP [file])
idf in jenin 298 ap
(photo credit: AP [file])
Despite the Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire, two Kassam rockets, fired from the Gaza Strip, landed in open territory in the Sderot area on Monday afternoon. No one was wounded and no damage was reported. Although the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Fatah party, claimed responsibility for the attack, many in the Palestinian Authority said that the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were actually the ones responsible as it was one of their group who was killed by IDF forces late Sunday night. Earlier Monday, a leader of the Islamic Jihad in Jenin, Mahmoud Al Saadi, threatened that his organization would carry out suicide bombings deep inside Israeli territory in response to Israeli violations of the cease-fire in the West Bank. Al Saadi called on his counterparts in Gaza to reject the fledgling truce unless it covered all the Palestinian territories and warned that his group might launch a suicide attack on Israel. "We live in the same homeland and it is forbidden to divide our homeland, " he said in a statement. Popular Resistance Committees spokesman Abu Mujahed also warned that continued attacks in the West Bank would lead to a collapse of the cease-fire.
  • Palestinians: 'Deal must apply in West Bank as well' "We warn the world that if the Zionist aggression in the West Bank doesn't stop, this truce will collapse," said Abu Mujahed. The threat came in the wake of an IDF overnight operation in in Kabatiya, south of Jenin, in which troops killed a PRC commander and a 50-year-old woman. The woman took the dead PRC commander's weapon and tried to run off, the army said, saying that troops did not immediately identify her as a woman in the pre-dawn darkness because she had been wearing trousers. Senior PRC official Yasser Maza'al said that Israel should "expect revenge in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip" in the wake of the deaths, Israel Radio reported. During IDF operations in the area, troops were fired on several times by Palestinian gunmen. No one was wounded, but an IDF vehicle was damaged. On Sunday morning, an IDF Duvdevan unit arrested Islamic Jihad fugitive Tamr Abudiyeh, 20, in Bethlehem. Abudiyeh, a weapons dealer involved in planning shooting attacks against Israelis, was part of a terror cell led by Ta'ar Hassan, an Islamic Jihad operative who attempted to detonate a car bomb on the Minharot road and who was killed while the IDF was trying to apprehend him. Abudiyeh was detained by security forces for interrogation. Meanwhile, the IDF arrested 15 Palestinian fugitives in overnight operations throughout the West Bank. In one such operation in Nablus, in which six Fatah fugitives were nabbed, Palestinian gunmen shot at IDF troops. No one was wounded, and no damage was reported. AP contributed to this report