A local Hamas commander died in an Israeli air strike at a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, the group and medical workers said. According to Reuters, the attack on Nafez Mansour took place as he was walking through Rafah refugee camp near the border with Egypt.
The Israeli army said Mansour was involved in the capture of an Israeli soldier, the Israeli military said. In June 2006, activists from Hamas and two allied factions killed two soldiers at a border post and captured a third, Cpl. Gilad Schalit. The Israeli military did not say in what capacity Nafez Manzur was involved in Schalit's capture. It said Manzur was also involved in other attacks, the AP reported.
Meanwhile, the Islamic Jihad said on Thursday it would not formally sign on to an Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel but would not be the first to violate it. Citing an unnamed high-level Egyptian official, Egypt's state news agency MENA said on Wednesday that Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo had agreed to an Egyptian proposal for a truce with Israel starting in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
In a new statement, Zeyad al-Nakhala, deputy to exiled Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Shallah, said the group could not be a party to a truce agreement that did not also apply at the onset to the occupied West Bank. "But we will not be the first to violate or undermine it, and we will give a chance for the reopening of (the Gaza Strip's border) crossings and alleviating the suffering of our people," Nakhala said, according to Reuters.
© 2008 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
