GAZA: Israeli forces seized a band of territory in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday, effectively setting up a security zone in what the army called an open-ended campaign to thwart Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
“We will remain for as long as is necessary...and if we decide to hold on to this territory for a long time, we will,” Col. Yoel Strick, commander of Israel’s northern Gaza brigade, told Army Radio.
The creation of what Israeli Army Radio dubbed a security zone came on the heels of a raid on a Gaza refugee camp on Thursday in which 11 Palestinians were killed, bloodshed that followed a bombing that killed 15 people in Israel.
Palestinian security sources said at least a dozen Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships pushed some two km into the Gaza Strip from the northern Erez border crossing.
The force rolled to the edge of Jabalya refugee camp, where Thursday’s bloodbath took place, and the town of Beit Hanoun, establishing an armored triangle of observation posts and roadblocks that put some 10,000 Palestinians under Israeli guns.
“We will remain for as long as is necessary...and if we decide to hold on to this territory for a long time, we will,” Col. Yoel Strick, commander of Israel’s northern Gaza brigade, told Army Radio.
The creation of what Israeli Army Radio dubbed a security zone came on the heels of a raid on a Gaza refugee camp on Thursday in which 11 Palestinians were killed, bloodshed that followed a bombing that killed 15 people in Israel.
Palestinian security sources said at least a dozen Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles backed by helicopter gunships pushed some two km into the Gaza Strip from the northern Erez border crossing.
The force rolled to the edge of Jabalya refugee camp, where Thursday’s bloodbath took place, and the town of Beit Hanoun, establishing an armored triangle of observation posts and roadblocks that put some 10,000 Palestinians under Israeli guns.