Israeli airstrike destroys Hamas lawmaker's home in Gaza

An Israeli F16 warplane fired rockets at predawn on Wednesday on the house of a senior Hamas militant in Gaza City and destroyed it, witnesses and security sources reported.

The owner of the house, Nidal Farhat who was himself a senior Hamas militant, is the son of Meryam Farhat, better known as Om Nidal, a well known lawmaker from the ruling Hamas movement.

There were no reports of casualties in the airstrike, as residents were warned in advance of the attack.

Om Nidal had lost three of six her sons in attacks they carried out against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip before the Israeli troops pulled out of Gaza in September 2005. She has a forth child imprisoned in an Israeli jail.

She was famous for her appearance in a video recorded when she was sending her 17-year-old son Mohammed to a shooting attack on a Jewish settlement in 2000. The boy killed five people before being shot dead.

Meanwhile, Palestinian medics said that two Palestinians were found shot dead by Israeli soldiers early on Wednesday, one in the West Bank city of Nablus and the other in northern Gaza Strip.

Of the dead, one was a 32-year-old Palestinian father of two children, who was killed in a refugee camp near Nablus during a gunbattle between Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian militants.

The other was a 27-year-old Palestinian, who was shot dead Tuesday night by Israeli soldiers as he was trying to cross the borders between northern Gaza Strip and Israel.

The Israeli army handed his body to the Palestinian side on Wednesday.

Source: Xinhua