GAZA CITY: Israeli troops killed an unarmed Palestinian man along the border in the southern Gaza Strip early on Thursday, the first fatality since a fragile truce went into effect three weeks ago.
A Palestinian armed faction claimed the man was one of its members and vowed to retaliate.
Troops “identified a suspicious person crossing the fence from Gaza into Israel near Kissufim. The force called on him to stop and fired warning shots but he did not stop and the soldiers fired at him and killed him, an army spokesman said.
“When they approached his body they saw he was unarmed, he said, adding that there had been several attempts by Palestinian militants to plant bombs in the border area.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, claimed the man was one of its members.
“We will respond to this crime soon, it said.
The head of Gaza emergency services, Muawiya Hassanin, identified the man as Salim Jumaa Al-Hamedi, aged 18.
It was the first fatality since a truce in and around Hamas-ruled Gaza went into effect on June 19, although both sides have accused each other of violations.
The death brings to 526 people the number of people – nearly all Palestinians and the majority of them Gaza militants – killed since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed in November, according to an AFP count.Gaza militants fired mortars rounds at Israel on Monday and again on Tuesday, but the rounds did not cause any damage or casualties.
Rockets have also been fired at Israel on four occasions since the start of the truce between Israel and Hamas, who seized power in Gaza in June last year.
Hamas has insisted it is respecting the Egyptian-mediated truce and doing its best to get other factions in the impoverished Palestinian territory to do the same.
Israel sealed Gaza’s borders on several occasions in response to the attacks, preventing delivery of the already limited quantities of goods allowed into the territory where a majority of the 1.5 million population relies on foreign aid.
Hamas has claimed this in itself was a violation of the truce deal which entailed a gradual easing of the embargo imposed after Hamas seized power in Gaza.
Before Thursday’s shooting, Palestinian and UN officials also accused Israeli troops of firing into the Gaza Strip on several occasions since the truce came into effect, wounding at least two people.
The Israeli army rejected the claims, claiming it fired only warning shots.
Egypt, which acted as go-between in the truce negotiations, is also mediating efforts to reach a prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel.Israel wants the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, a conscript held by Hamas since his capture in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.
Hamas is seeking the release of 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. -AFP
