User:Wikifan12345/merge

In August 2011, Israel conducted a series of airborne attacks on Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip in response to cross-border attacks launched by 12 militants on 18 August 2011 in southern Israel. Three militants were identified as Egyption, but the remaining militants origin is uncertain, with the Israeli government blaming the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), who denied involvement. The air strikes caused 15 deaths, and more than 30 were wounded.

Subsequently, Gaza militants fired more than 100 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, thus ending Hamas' more than two-year de facto truce with Israel, killing one Israeli civilian, and injuring more than a dozen. Over half a million Israelis were forced to seek shelter in bomb shelters. Also, a suicide bomber thought to belong to the Popular Resistance Committees, killed several Egyptian soldiers near the Philadelphi Route crossing.

An informal truce was agreed by Israel and Hamas on 21 August 2011. However, on 24 Augsust 2011, five Palestinians, two Islamic Jihad leaders and three civilians were killed and at least 15 people were wounded in Israeli air strikes in the southern town of Rafah and in Gaza City. Israeli military claim that the victims were involved in weapons smuggling and launching rockets at southern Israel, according to the BBC.

Background
On 14 August 2011, Israeli jets had struck four targets inside Gaza, killing one militant and wounding four other people including a five-year-old boy, in retaliation for a Palestinian rocket that had landed in Beersheba.

On 18 August 2011, militants identified as Palestinians and Egyptians launched a series of attacks against civilian vehicles in southern Israel near Eilat and the Ein Netafim border crossing with Egypt. The attacks caused the deaths of eight Israelis and some of the alleged perpetrators. Five Egyptian soldiers were also killed as a result of Israeli gunfire across the Egyptian border, which were followed by protests in Egypt that called for the recalling of the Egyptian ambassador to Israel and for compensation.

Air attacks
Hours after the attacks in southern Israel, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched retaliatory strikes on the Gaza Strip after Defense Minister Ehud Barak had accused the Popular Resistance Committees of being responsible for the attacks. The IAF bombed two tunnels and one warehouse used for manufacturing weapons in southern Gaza and one site used for militant activities. According to a statement released by an IDF spokesperson, the tunnels had been used to allow assailants to infiltrate Israel and carry out attacks. The IAF identified direct hits and all aircraft returned to Israel.

Six Palestinians, including one child, were killed in an airstrike by the IAF as the military continued to hunt for militants in the Gaza Strip. Samed Abdul Mu'ty Abed, a senior PRC member, was killed in an airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip. The man was riding a motorcycle according to multiple Palestinian reports. Ma'an News Agency reported a total of 14 Palestinian deaths since the attacks in Israel of the previous day.

Fatalities

 * Five PRC militants, killed in an airstrike in Southern Gaza, including PRC leaders Khaled Sha’ath, Immad Hammad, and Emad Nasr.
 * Sha'ath's two-year-old killed in the same home in the airstrike.
 * Samed Abdul Mu'ty Abed, 25, a senior PRC militant, killed while he was riding a motorcycle in the north.
 * An airstrike in central Gaza targeting a car killed three unnamed family members: a Palestinian militant, his 5 year old son, Islam Greagea, and his brother, a physician.
 * Two Palestinians killed in airborne attacks near the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip
 * Muhammad Enayeh, 22
 * Mahmoud Abu Samra, 13, killed when a Grad rocket fired by a Palestinian faction fell short.

Gaza militant reactions
After the Israeli Army attacked seven targets in the Gaza Strip, two rockets fired from Gaza landed in a courtyard of a Yeshiva in Ashdod, wounding 10 Israelis. The buildings were lightly damaged in the attack. Earlier, at least 10 rockets were fired into southern Israel, hitting the cities of Ashkelon and Beer Sheva. No injures were reported.

A suicide bomber killed several Egyptian soldiers on the Egyptian side of the border with Israel near the Philadelphia Route crossing. Security officials claimed that the suicide bomber belonged to the Popular Resistance Committees.

In the two days following 18 August 2011, 11 Israelis have been injured by rockets launched from Gaza.

On 20 August 2011, 64 rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit Beer Sheva, resulting in the death of one person and injuring nine others, while long range missiles hit Ashdod and injured three people. The Izzedine al Qassam Brigades also said that it fired four long-range Grad rockets at Ofakim. The attacks forced over half a million Israelis to seek shelter in bomb shelters and stay there for the night.

Fatalities

 * 1 Israeli civilian killed in Beer Sheva by a Grad rocket, fired from Gaza.

Political response
The Middle East Quartet issued a joint statement condemning the attacks in southern Israel and expressed concern "about the unsustainable situation in Gaza as well as the risk of escalation" and called for "restraint from all sides".

Egypt, denouncing the use of force against civilians, "advised Israel to immediately stop its military operations against Gaza".