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Body of Palestinian militant wrapped up ready for burial
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An Israeli air strike in Gaza killed a Palestinian gunman
and wounded another on Sunday, hospital officials said, hours after Israel
killed the leader of an al Qaeda-linked militant group.
An Israeli military spokesman said the men targeted had been
preparing to fire rockets into Israel, reports Reuters.
The air strike, which targeted a motorcycle in southern
Gaza, came hours after Israel killed two other militants in a similar attack
late on Saturday.
Both Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, and Israel
identified one of the men killed in the earlier attack as Salafi jihadist
Hisham Al-Saedni.
Hamas said Saedni had headed Tawhid and Jihad (One God and
Holy War), a group with an Islamist ideology shared by al Qaeda, while the
Israeli military said he had helped found a kindred militant Salafi movement,
the Hashura Council of the Mujahideen.
Saedni had recently been planning a attack that would be
carried out in the neighbouring Egyptian Sinai, the Israeli military said in a
statement. The desert peninsula has seen a surge of Islamist militant activity
during the political upheaval rocking Cairo since early 2011.
A number of Jihadist Salafi groups have surfaced in Gaza in
recent years. Unlike Hamas, they endorse an ideology of global Jihad and some
accuse Hamas of failing to implement Islamic laws in the coastal enclave.
Hamas rejects permanent peace with Israel and the two sides
fought a three-week war from December 2008 into January 2009. The border is
tense with frequent clashes. About 40 rockets have been fired from Gaza into
Israel in October.
Israel says it holds Hamas responsible for any attacks
launched from Gaza, which has been under the group's control since 2007.
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