Israeli warplanes on Tuesday bombed a Palestinian marine police position south of the Gaza Strip killing two members of that corps and wounding several others.
Local medical sources said that Hani Barhoum, 19, and Mohammed Al-Sharif, 22, were killed in the latest aerial strike west of Rafah, south of the Strip.
In other Israeli raids and missile shelling since Monday night a total of 10 Palestinians were killed in the Strip the majority of them affiliated with the Islamic Jihad Movement's armed wing the Quds Brigades including their general commander in the Strip. Early Tuesday, Israeli occupation troops also killed another Islamic Jihad operative north of the West Bank.
In Gaza, thousands of people took to the streets in funeral processions on Tuesday for the dead, whose bodies were wrapped in black Islamic Jihad flags.
In swift retaliation to the Israeli assassination attacks, the Palestinian armed wings started to launch a rockets at Israeli military posts.
Meanwhile, in response to the recent Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, Abu Obeida, the spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, confirmed that the Qassam fighters have means and tactics effective in retaliating to such Israeli air operations, adding that the Israeli air strikes happened after the Israeli government came to realize that waging a large-scale military operations on the ground will bring a disastrous consequences on its troops.
Earlier, the Hamas Movement said that the latest Israeli attacks were one of the fruits of Annapolis conference. The statement issued at dawn Tuesday charged that the assassination was also the fruit of security collaboration between the PA leadership and the Israeli occupation authority.
It said that "the conspiracy against the Palestinian people and its resistance is getting more and more ferocious ever since the Annapolis conference was held."
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday expressed outrage at "continued crimes" perpetrated by the Israeli regime against defenseless Palestinians in Gaza Strip and the West Bank. According to IRNA, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said that Israel has imposed economic restrictions on people living in Gaza Strip and the West Bank and has assassinated Palestinian activists and the inhabitants of Gaza City as the outcome of the so-called peace talks in Annapolis.
"Unfortunately, the US and the western countries have kept silent on massacre of the innocent Palestinians and collective punishment of the people living in Gaza," he said.
