An armed group loosely affiliated to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party claimed Thursday to have fired a chemical warhead at Israel in response to Gaza incursions and arrests in the West Bank. An Israeli army spokeswoman said no rocket launch or impact had been identified whatsoever in the last few hours.
"We fired a rocket with a chemical warhead on Sderot," a spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Abu Qussai, said in reference to Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz's home town close to the border with Gaza.
"It is to avenge the attempt to invade the Gaza Strip and the arrest of ministers and members of parliament," in the West Bank from the governing Palestinian faction Hamas, the spokesman said.
Israeli tanks and troops rolled a short distance into the northern Gaza under the cover of darkness early Thursday, Palestinian sources said.
On Wednesday, troops launched two incursions into southern Gaza aimed at piling on the pressure on the Palestinians to free a 19-year-old corporal captured by three other militant groups on Sunday.
Eight cabinet ministers in the Hamas-led government and 20 Islamic lawmakers were abducted by Israeli troops in the West Bank overnight, Palestinian security officials said Thursday.
The officials were abduct in a vast Israeli military operation conducted in Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank, and various other towns in the occupied Palestinian territory, the sources said.
Agencies
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