[[{"content_id":"2116","domain_id":"0","lang_id":"en","portal_id":"2","owner_id":"83","user_id":"4","view_accesslevel_id":"0","edit_accesslevel_id":"0","delete_accesslevel_id":"0","editor_id":"0","content_title":"Israel assassinates Hamas commanders in sting operation","content_number":"","content_date_event":"2018-11-12 11:18:26","content_summary":"Israeli special forces infiltrate the Gaza Strip, assassinating a top Hamas commander, while subsequent Israeli airstrikes kill five others, including another commander with the Palestinian resistance movement.","content_summary_fill":"1","content_body":"On Sunday, the group said in a statement that the forces had made their way into the coastal sliver using a civilian vehicle.\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe Israeli occupants assassinated Nour Baraka, a senior commander with Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, in a drive-by shooting near the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, it added.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nThe group defined the exact place where the targeted killing took place as “the area of \u200b\u200bthe Shahid Ismail Abu Shanab mosque, three kilometers (1.8 miles) east of Khan Yunis.”\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe mother of Nour Baraka, a commander for Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who was killed during an Israeli operation on the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, reacts at a hospital morgue, where his body was transported on November 11, 2018. (Photo by AFP)\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nEnsuing firefight\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nA firefight erupted afterwards, with Israeli aircraft firing from above “to cover the retreat of this force, and in the process some of our people were killed.” Local witnesses said the aircraft fired over 20 missiles during the strikes.\r\n\r\n"The incident continues and our forces continue to respond to this dangerous Zionist aggression," said the statement.\r\n\r\nFive more people were killed during the airstrikes, including Mohammad al-Qarra, another Hamas commander, Palestinian medical officials were quoted by AFP as saying.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nPalestinian security forces gather at a hospital morgue, where the bodies of five of the six men killed during an Israeli operation on the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip were transported on November 11, 2018. (Photo by AFP)\r\n\r\nVarious reports said an Israeli trooper had been seized during the exchange, but the Israeli military denied any such incident had taken place.\r\n\r\n“No IDF (Israeli military) soldiers were abducted during the IDF's operational activity in the Gaza Strip,” a spokesperson said, quoted by Israeli media network Arutz Sheva’s website.\r\n\r\nThis is not the first time Hamas officials come under Israeli attack. The regime has assassinated many figures with the Palestinian group.\r\n\r\nLast March, Tel Aviv assassinated Mazen Fuqaha, one of the group’s senior figures, in Gaza City, the Gaza Strip. The victim was shot with four bullets to his head.\r\n\r\nIn 2010, Israel had itself been embroiled in an international scandal when its operatives used false European and Australian passports to assassinate senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the United Arab Emirates.\r\n\r\nThe killing and the circumstances surrounding it also raised suspicions of complicity by Emirati intelligence and other services in the assassination.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nNetanyahu cuts Paris trip short\r\n\r\nIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, cut short an underway trip to Paris, where he was attending World War I commemorations, flying back to Israel to address the situation.\r\n\r\nHe had claimed at a press conference in the French capital earlier in the day that the situation in the enclave had “no diplomatic solution.”\r\n\r\nTel Aviv blockaded the already-impoverished sliver of land more than a decade ago after Hamas decisively won the Palestinian parliamentary elections. The embargo has rendered living conditions for Gaza’s two-million-strong population insufferable. The United Nations has warned that the overall pressure could render Gaza uninhabitable by 2020.\r\n\r\nThe regime regularly conducts air raids targeting Gaza, and has launched three large-scale wars against the territory, killing thousands during each.\r\n\r\nNetanyahu, however, said, “I am doing everything I can to avoid an unnecessary war.”","content_html":"
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