An 18-year-old Palestinian man was killed and two others were moderately wounded after the IDF opened fire toward them in the southern Gaza Strip.



The three were near the border fence between Rafah and Israel on Tuesday night and were hit by tank fire after attempting to cross the border, the IDF said.

It is not clear why they were approaching the fence, but according to initial reports, the three appeared to IDF soldiers to be in the act of planting bombs.Ashraf al-Qudra, the spokesman for the health ministry in Gaza, identified the 18-year-old as Yousef Abu Azra. He and the two wounded, no names given, were evacuated to the Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip, in moderate and critical condition with shrapnel wounds over their bodies, according to the spokesman.The Palestinian Authority condemned the Israeli artillery fire on east Rafah, with government spokesman Tariq Rishmawi calling on the international community “to put an end to the continued and premeditated Israeli aggressions on our people in all places that they exist.”The IDF said it was investigating the incident.Two weeks ago, two bombs were neutralized in an off-limits area in the northern Gaza Strip. The charges were taken in for further examination. There were no casualties in the incident.Hamas has recently built military outposts every dozen meters along the border with Israel and also carries out regular patrols, to both impose its control on the Strip by preventing Palestinians from crossing into Israel and to watch what is happening on the Israeli side.The incident comes as the military finished its largest planned drill of the year, calling up some 2,000 reserve soldiers to simulate a war in Gaza. The surprise drill, which was carried out by the Southern Command’s reserve division, the Sinai Division, included four reserve brigades – two infantry and two armored brigades. The IDF’s Home Front Command also carried out a drill this past week in the South.Despite tension between Israel and the Gaza Strip running high, the IDF said that both drills were planned in advance.The last two months have seen gunfire targeting IDF troops along the border as well as seven rockets launched at Israel.Most of the attacks have been claimed by small jihadist groups, often as a means of pressuring Hamas by raising tensions between the terrorist organization and Israel.Hamas has cracked down on these small groups, recently carrying out a series of arrests among Salafi, jihadist, pro-Islamic State organizations. Nonetheless, Israel holds Hamas responsible for all fire coming from the Strip.

var cont = `Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>



`; document.getElementById("linkPremium").innerHTML = cont; (function (v, i){ });</s>GAZA, March 22 (Reuters) - Israeli fire killed a Palestinian and wounded two others in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday near Israel's border fence with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, hospital officials said.

The Israeli military said its forces "detected three suspects near the security fence and fired towards them, identifying one hit" in the pre-dawn incident.

No Palestinian militant group claimed the men as members, a sign, local residents said, that the three may have been trying to cross into Israel under the cover of darkness to seek work.</s>The military said in a statement that a routine patrol on the Israeli side of the border came under attack from snipers in the southern Gaza Strip and that forces responded with fire from the ground and the air.

Hamas sources named the dead man as Tayseer Asmairi, a member of its armed wing's monitoring unit in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli soldier sustained a severe chest injury and was flown to hospital where he was listed in serious condition, the army said.

There have been sporadic clashes since a 50-day war ended in Gaza in August. On Friday, Israeli planes bombed a Hamas militant base in the Gaza Strip in response to a rocket that militants launched earlier that day.

"This attack, the second of this week, is a lethal violation of the relative quiet along the Gaza border and is a blatant breach of Israel's sovereignty ... Israel will not hesitate to respond to any attempt to harm IDF soldiers," military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement.

Hamas blamed Israel for the escalation and said that while it wanted calm, it would respond to Israeli actions.

"The resistance is committed to calm as long as (Israel) abides by it but we will not be silent against continued Zionist crimes," Hamas said, listing Israel's air strikes as one form of violation of the truce.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas. The fighting was ended by an Egyptian-brokered truce on Aug.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in seven weeks of fighting, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed.</s>Palestinian officials say one 18-year-old male teen has been killed and two others wounded by Israeli artillery fire.

A Palestinian teen has been killed and two other men wounded by Israeli fire in southern Gaza, according to health officials.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said 18-year-old Yousef Abu Athira was killed before dawn on Wednesday by Israeli artillery fire east of Rafah.

He said two others sustained shrapnel wounds and were taken to Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.

The Israeli army, which had been carrying out training exercises near the border overnight, said it detected three people near the security fence separating Gaza and Israel and fired at them, according to a military spokeswoman.

But Yasser Abu Athira, the killed teen's cousin, said the 18-year-old was on the farming land that his family owns.

"We heard the noise of about 15 shells that came down. After a while, we found out that it was Yousef. The Israeli army said he was trying to get into Israel, but we completely deny that claim," he told Al Jazeera.

"We are very angry and we blame this on the occupation and the Israeli army. He was not armed and he is not part of any faction."

Gaza has been under a decade-long siege imposed by Israel following Hamas' election victory and subsequent takeover of the enclave in 2007.

Israel's military said that some 2,000 reserve soldiers had since Sunday been performing military exercises around Gaza Strip.

Tareq Rishmawi, spokesperson for the Palestinian government, denounced the Israeli army's large-scale exercises over the past few days and called on the international community to end the systematic "Israeli assaults".

"The continuation of the unacceptable Israeli siege on Gaza, exceeding 10 years, and continuing assaults on our people is a violation of international human rights law," he said.</s>A Palestinian was killed and two others injured before dawn today by Israeli artillery fire in Gaza, according to a Palestinian official.

According to the Israeli army, the three men were in the border area between the Palestinian enclave and Israeli territory, where multiple exchanges of fire have taken place recently.

“Youssef Abou Azra, 18, was killed and two other Palestinians injured by artillery fire by the occupier (Israel) to the east of Rafah,” the large city to the south of the Gaza Strip, said Achraf al-Qodra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

A spokesperson for the Israeli army told AFP that the soldiers had spotted three men “close to the security fence and opened fire in their direction,” without giving further details.

Several exchanges of fire have taken place in recent weeks between Israel and the Gaza strip, which has been governed for a decade by the Islamist movement Hamas.

At the start of March, Israeli forces struck two Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip after soldiers were fired at along the metal and concrete barrier that seals off the Gaza Strip from Israel.

In February, Israeli warplanes and tanks pounded Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, hitting Hamas military facilities and wounding four Palestinians, none of them seriously.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.

Since the last one in 2014, a fragile ceasefire has been observed along the largely closed border.

Missiles and rockets are periodically fired at Israel, generally by hardline Islamist groups opposed to Hamas.

But Israel holds Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza regardless of who carried it out.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App now</s>A Palestinian teen was killed and two others injured by shelling on Gaza on Wednesday as the Israeli army chief of staff admitted to “disproportionate” use of force in response to rockets fired from the territory.

Yousif Shaaban Abu Athra, whose age has been reported as either 15 or 18, was killed by tank fire before dawn in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

The education ministry in Gaza said that Abu Athra was a 10th grade student.

An Israeli army spokesperson told media that the three were behaving in a suspicious manner, as though they were attempting to plant an explosive device, without giving further details.

The military frequently fires on Palestinians who enter the so-called buffer zone along Gaza’s boundary with Israel. The no-go area is understood to extend some 300 meters into Gaza’s eastern and northern territory, but Palestinian human rights groups say that the zones can go as deep as 1,500 meters.

Several Palestinians were killed in the no-go zones in 2016.

Israel also frequently fires on Palestinian fishermen off of the Gaza coastline, which is subjected to similar restrictions. One fisherman went missing and is presumed dead after naval forces rammed his boat in January.

On Wednesday the Israeli army’s chief of staff told a parliamentary committee that the military uses “disproportionate” force in response to rocket fire from Gaza.

“The Israel Defense Force employs a policy of using aggressive, and disproportionate, force in order to prevent situations in which they fire rockets at us and we return shells,” Gadi Eisenkot stated.

Electricity infrastructure was reported to have been damaged by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza last week after a rocket fired from the territory landed in an open area in southern Israel.

Last week Eisenkot said that Israel would not hesitate to strike “Lebanon and the organizations operating under its authority and approval,” suggesting it would target civilian infrastructure in any future military confrontation with Hizballah.

Israel employed what is known as the Dahiya doctrine – named for a Beirut neighborhood leveled by Israeli strikes – during its assault on Lebanon in 2006. The doctrine involves the application of disproportionate force to cause great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure and the suffering of civilians.

Eisenkot disclosed an expansion of this doctrine shortly before Israel’s unprecedented assault on Gaza that caused widespread destruction and hundreds of civilian fatalities during its military offensive in December 2008 and January 2009.

“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases,” Eisenkot, then a senior general, told an Israeli newspaper.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank on Friday.

Murad Yousif Abu Ghazi, 16, died after he was shot in the chest in the al-Arroub refugee camp near the city of Hebron.

An Israeli army spokesperson claimed that soldiers fired towards a group who were throwing firebombs at passing cars.

A Palestinian girl was in critical condition last week after she was wounded by Israeli soldiers at a junction near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc in the southern West Bank. The army claimed Fatima Taqatqa, 16, was attempting to carry out a car ramming attack when she was shot. No Israelis were physically injured during the incident.

Taqatqa and another Palestinian teenager, Jihad Hammad, were under Israeli detention last week in separate hospitals. Hammad, 17, was shot in the head with a live bullet during confrontations in the central West Bank village of Silwad on 10 March.

Thirty-five Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2016.</s>An Israeli air strike on Monday killed two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who Israel's military said had been preparing to launch a rocket across the border.

Palestinian sources said a 24-year-old militant was killed in the strike and a second man later died of his wounds, but hospital officials did not say whether he was also a militant.

The air strike was "carried out in order to eliminate an imminent attack targeting civilian communities of southern Israel", a military spokesman said.

Gaza is run by the Islamist group Hamas, which is sworn to Israel's destruction, but which has been trying to prevent smaller militant groups from firing at Israel.</s>JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian officials say Israeli shelling has killed one person and wounded two others near the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra says the body of 18-year-old Yousef Abu Azra was recovered early Wednesday after shells landed near the border fence separating Gaza and Israel. He said two others sustained shrapnel injuries.

The Israeli military says its forces fired on three suspected militants who had approached the security fence.

A cease-fire has largely held since a 50-day war between Israel and Gaza militants in the summer of 2014. But militants in Gaza occasionally fire rockets at Israel's south, and Israel has warned that they are trying to rebuild a network of offensive tunnels into Israel that was largely damaged in the war.
An Israeli Army tank kills a Palestinian teenager and wounds two others near the Gaza border.