Weekend Wrap, April 8

IDF kills senior Gaza bombmaker; Abbas, Haniyeh blast IDF strike; US reportedly planning strike on Iran.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
weekend wrap 88 (photo credit: )
weekend wrap 88
(photo credit: )
Abbas, Haniyeh blast IDF airstrike strike; terror groups threaten response PA officials expressed anger over the IDF strike in Rafah overnight in which six Palestinians were killed, among them Iyad Abu Aynayn, 29, a bombmaker associated with Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees in the Gaza Strip, and his 5-year-old daughter. 14 others were wounded in the attack, including one who was in a coma, Palestinian security officials said. Report: US planning strike on Iran The American government was planning a military strike on Iran, including bombing its nuclear reactor, according to an investigative report due to be published next week in The New Yorker magazine. A senior Pentagon advisor, quoted anonymously in the article, said that the White House was convinced the only way to solve the Iran nuclear crisis would be to change the balance of power with Iran through war. Four people stabbed in under a day Four people were stabbed throughout the country in less than a day beginning Friday night. A 19-year-old man was lightly wounded early Saturday in Rishon Lezion; a youth was stabbed in the stomach and chest early Saturday on Keren Hayesod Street in Kiryat Bialik near Haifa; an 18-year-old was stabbed in his stomach early Saturday morning near the Bahai'i gardens in Haifa; and a 27-year-old man was stabbed and seriously wounded on Friday night in the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem. Abbas: 'Convergence' will lead to war PA Chairman Abbas said Friday in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that Olmert's "convergence plan" will only bring more war to the region. His statement followed a decision by the the United States to cancel or suspend up to $411 million in Palestinian aid rather than risk that the money might go to the Palestinian Authority's new Hamas leadership. IDF locates Hebron bomb laboratory IDF forces located an explosives laboratory in the Abu Sneinah neighborhood in Hebron on Saturday morning. An explosion rocked the laboratory on Friday night, apparently as a result of a "work accident" in which three Palestinians unintentionally detonated an explosive device they were constructing for an attack on IDF forces in the city. Security forces found several pipe bombs and other explosive devices in the laboratory.