sraeli airstrikes overnight on a smuggling tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah killed two Palestinians and injured nine others.
According to medical sources Nael Ali Batiniji, 22, and Mansour Ali Batiniji, 32, and Ibrahim Batiniji 24, arrived dead at Abu Yousef An-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. The three were brothers. Rescue workers were still searching for more bodies in the rubble of the tunnel.
The medics also said nine injured people were taken to hospitals in ambulances after the strike.
Witnesses said that the Israeli warplanes struck in the early morning hours, completely leveling several tunnels.
The Israeli military confirmed that it bombed the tunnel in a statement, saying that the strike was in response to “mortar fire,” from the Gaza Strip.
According to Israeli sources, Palestinians fired two or three mortar shells from northern Gaza at the Zikim military base, south of the city of Ashkelon on Monday night. One Israeli soldier was reportedly injured in the head when he dove for cover.
Smugglers use an extensive network of tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border to import food, fuel, medicine, cigarettes, and other goods made scare by an Israeli blockade. Israel claims that smugglers also use the tunnels to move weapons into Gaza.
Meanwhile the An-Nasser Salah Ad-Din Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), said that they fired four mortar shells at Israeli forces operating in an area called Al-Amour, near the Sufa border crossing. The group said the shelling took place at 1am. There were no reports of casualties.
Also on Monday evening, Israeli soldiers shot two Palestinians in northern Gaza, killing one. The shooting took place in the Al-Atatra area north of the town of Beit Lahiya.
Mu’awiya Hassanein, the director of Ambulance and Emergency Services in the Palestinian Health Ministry, said that one critically injured man was taken in an ambulance to Kamal Udwan Hospital in northern Gaza.
Ambulances were unable to immediately reach the other man who lay on the ground bleeding and eventually died. Hassanein identified him as Ata Al-Hasoumi, 20. Medics told Reuters that the man was a farmer.
Israeli military sources told reporters that two “suspicious” people had approached the border with Israel and ignored warning shots.
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