Skip to footer

Israeli and Palestinian forces exchange fire near Gaza

After a sniper fired on an Israeli border patrol, Israeli forces shot dead a member of Hamas's armed wing in the Gaza Strip.

|
( AP Photo/Dudu Grunshpan)
An Israeli soldier wounded at Gaza border is brought to a hospital in Beersheba, Israel, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2014. The Israeli military said it deployed tank fire and an airstrike on targets in Gaza after its troops came under attack by Palestinian snipers as they were on patrol on the Israeli side of the border.
  • By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ori Lewis Reuters

| Gaza

Israeli forces shot dead a member of Hamas's armed wing after a firefight erupted along the border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and an Israeli soldier was wounded, Gaza hospital officials and the Israeli army said.

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. 26.

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. (Editing by Alison Williams/Ruth Pitchford)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Israeli and Palestinian forces exchange fire near Gaza
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1224/Israeli-and-Palestinian-forces-exchange-fire-near-Gaza
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe