Israeli Soldier and Palestinian Killed and 11 others Injured in Israeli Incursion in Khan Younis

Palestinian man injured by shrapnel(Ma'anImages)

17 October 2007

Gaza – Ma'an – A young Palestinian man and an Israeli soldier were killed and 11 other Palestinians were injured during an Israeli incursion into Al-Farahin in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

Twenty-year-old Hazim Asfur was killed and 3 others were injured by shrapnel from an Israeli shell launched at a group of Palestinian civilians in Al-Farahin, according to Palestinian medical sources.

The Israeli newspaper Ha'retz announced that twenty-year-old Sergeant Ben Kubani, an Israeli conscript, died after his vehicle was hit by a rocket propelled grenade. He was critically wounded and died of his injuries while being taken to Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva.

Israeli forces went into the Al-Farahin neighborhood and bulldozed agricultural lands in the north and west of the area, Ma'an's reporter said.

Palestinian security sources said that the invading Israeli forces arrested more than 15 Palestinians in the incursion.

The military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades, claimed that their fighters launched five rocket propelled grenades at the Israeli military vehicles. Al-Quds Brigades sources told Ma'an that a group of their fighters clashed with the invading Israeli troops, causing casualties amongst the soldiers.

The National Resistance Brigades, the military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) also claimed that they clashed with an Israeli undercover unit during the Israeli incursion into Khan Younis.

The Al-Qassam Brigades of the Hamas movement also claimed responsibility for launching a rocket propelled grenade at an Israeli unit, stationed on top of a house in Abasan in Khan Younis.

Also an Israeli air strike in the Al-Farahin neighbourhood injured eight Palestinians, two seriously, according to Palestinian medical sources at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.

Sources in the Palestinian resistance said that Israeli helicopters launched a missile at Al-Quds brigades' activists injuring four of them.

Medical sources named some of the injured citizens as twenty-nine-year-old Sufyan Abu Tair, twenty-five-year-old Mahmoud Sha'ban, twenty-three-year-old Muhammad Abu Hamra and twenty-two-year-old Lina Asfur.