JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Palestinians were celebrating victory over Israel in a Gaza refugee camp after a human shield of hundreds prompted the military to abort a threatened air strike.

"This is a victory for the Palestinian people. It is a defeat for the Israeli F-16s," said Ahmed Fuad Barud, a 33-year-old militant in the radical Popular Resistance Committees, on Sunday.

"Every time they (the Israeli military) call from now on, no one will leave their homes," he said from his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp which Israel had warned overnight would be destroyed in a campaign against militant infrastructure.

The military called off the strike after several hundred Palestinians late Saturday formed a human shield around the house, home of wanted militant Wael Barud of the Resistance Committees.

"Basically yes," a military spokesman said when asked if the raid was aborted. "We don't want to hurt uninvolved civilians. The terrorists are using uninvolved civilians as human shields.

"We'll continue to operate against terrorist infrastructure while continuing to distinguish between the civilians and the terrorists," the spokesman added.

Between 200 to 300 neighbours had flocked to the Barud family home after receiving the warning late Saturday. Neighbours and militants gathered at the house throughout Sunday to celebrate what they hailed as a victory.

"The sons of the Jews cannot break us, our will or our resistance," said family member Abu Emad Barud, calling himself a local leader in the armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement.

"These are the boys of Islam, the boys of the resistance who have gathered here," he added, gesturing to those circling around him.

The wanted Wael Barud is a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, one of three factions that claimed responsibility for the capture of an Israeli corporal in June, triggering a massive Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel has been carrying out nightly raids against targets across the Gaza Strip since rockets fired by Palestinian militants in northern Gaza killed a mother of two in the southern town of Sderot on Wednesday.

Another salvo of Palestinian rockets on Sunday left three people wounded in the same town, including one seriously, as the Israeli cabinet weighed its options in combatting the rocket attacks.

On November 3, several hundred heavily veiled women managed to rescue 15 Palestinian gunmen from a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun by marching in a chain of human shields during a bloody Israeli ground offensive.

Four protestors, including two women, were killed and another 25 people wounded by Israeli gunfire ahead of the daring rescue attempt.
Link...

Permanent Link posted by J @ 8:18 pm