Gaza gunmen execute 18, call them spies for Israel

Palestinian children at a refugee camp in Gaza City wash their faces in the ruins of the Al-Sousi mosque before Friday prayers.

Palestinian children at a refugee camp in Gaza City wash their faces in the ruins of the Al-Sousi mosque before Friday prayers.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Gaza militants gunned down 18 people accused of being spies for Israel on Friday, a day after Israel killed three top Hamas military commanders in an airstrike believed to be guided by collaborators.

Masked gunmen lined up seven of the men, their heads covered by bags, along a wall outside a Gaza City mosque and shot them to death in front of hundreds of people, witnesses said. A note pinned on the wall said they had leaked information about the location of tunnels, homes of fighters and rockets that were later struck by Israel.

In Israel on Friday, a 4-year-old boy was killed when a mortar shell hit two cars in a parking lot in Nahal Oz, a small farming community near Gaza. Five Israelis were hurt, one seriously, in several rocket strikes, the military said. One rocket damaged a synagogue.

"Hamas will pay a dear price for this severe terror attack," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement offering condolences to the boy's family. He said Israeli forces would "intensify their activity against Hamas and the terror organizations in Gaza" until the operation's objective -- to restore quiet -- had been met.

The Israeli military said in a statement the deadly mortar shell had been fired from next to a United Nations school currently serving as a shelter for displaced Gazans. It said it had conveyed a "severe message" to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency.

Israel has repeatedly said Hamas uses schools, mosques and residential areas as cover from which to stage attacks, putting civilians at risk by drawing Israeli retaliation.

By early evening, Gaza militants had fired at least 117 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, and Israel carried out at least 35 airstrikes in Gaza, the military said.

In a new warning from Israel's military, automated phone messages told Gaza residents that "Hamas has decided to go to war again" and that people must "get away immediately from areas where Hamas conducts terror activities."

About the same time, an airstrike hit a house in Gaza City, and a huge orange ball of fire from the explosion rose into Gaza's night sky.

At least 45 people were wounded, health officials said. Ayman Sahabani, head of the emergency department at the city's Shifa Hospital, said only a minute passed before the firing of a warning missile and the bombing.

Since Israel-Hamas fighting began July 8, at least 2,092 Palestinians have been killed, said Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra. According to U.N. figures, at least 478 Palestinian minors were among the dead, including 320 who were 12 or younger.

On the Israeli side, the boy's killing Friday raised the death toll to 68 -- 64 soldiers, three civilians and a Thai worker.

Friday's escalation came three days after Israel-Hamas truce talks collapsed in Cairo.

At the talks, Hamas had rejected an Egyptian proposal under which Israel would gradually ease its border blockade of Gaza in exchange for a period of extended quiet. Hamas said Israel offered nothing specific, and says it will only halt fire if Israel and Egypt agree to open Gaza's borders to trade and travel.

The border blockade was imposed in 2007, after the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza. Israel has said it cannot lift the closure unless Hamas stops trying to smuggle or manufacture weapons and agrees to disarm, a demand the Islamic militants have rejected.

Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza, signaled Friday that Hamas also would reject any U.N. Security Council resolution that seeks to disarm the group. Britain, Germany and France are working on a cease-fire resolution that calls for opening Gaza's borders, in exchange for restoring the rule of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Abbas lost control of Gaza in the Hamas takeover.

Zahar wrote in a text message that "Hamas will not accept any international resolutions that try to touch the weapons of the resistance and don't fully lift the blockade."

Abbas, meanwhile, met with the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, to push for Hamas to accept the Egyptian cease-fire proposal. The talks took place in Qatar, a regional backer of Hamas, but it was not clear whether Abbas made headway. He left Friday for Egypt, ahead of talks with the Egyptian president today.

In Gaza, the killing of the 18 people accused of spying for Israel came after the deaths of three top Hamas military commanders in an Israeli airstrike, reportedly with the help of local informants.

Even after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel's Shin Bet security service reportedly continued to run a network of informers, recruiting them through blackmail, the lure of exit permits or money.

Hamas media said the shootings signaled the start of a new crackdown, under the rallying cry of "choking the necks of the collaborators." It was the largest number of suspected informers killed in a single day under Hamas rule.

Gaza's Interior Ministry, which handles judicial and security matters, declined to address the reported executions. But a statement published on many Palestinian websites -- including some affiliated with Hamas -- said a "revolutionary court" had been formed "in agreement with the war's circumstances."

Al Majd, a website run by the Internal Security Service of the Hamas government that ran Gaza until June, quoted an unidentified official as saying, "The judiciary procedures and measures were completed against the accused," and future collaborators would be dealt with in the field, not in courthouses, to create deterrence.

Hamas said it would not release the names of those killed because it wanted to protect the reputations of their families.

On Friday morning, 11 alleged informants were shot by a firing squad at Gaza City police headquarters. Two of the 11 were women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. The group urged an immediate halt to what it called "extrajudicial executions."

Later in the day, seven people were killed outside the downtown al-Omari mosque as worshippers wrapped up noon prayers. Photos from the shooting posted on several Palestinian websites showed several hundred people gathered near the scene.

The photos showed masked, black-clad gunmen leading several men with bags over their heads to a wall.

Witness Ayman Sharif, 42, quoted one of the gunmen as saying the seven "had sold their souls to the enemy for a cheap price" and had caused death and destruction. The commander of the group then gave the order to the others to open fire with automatic rifles. He said the bodies were collected by an ambulance and the gunmen left.

The Hamas-run Al Rai news website said that after the public killings, several suspected collaborators "surrendered to the resistance and declared that they repented." It did not provide details.

Friday's killing marked the third time since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war six weeks ago that Hamas announced the killing of alleged collaborators. On Thursday, Al Majd said seven people were arrested on suspicion of working with Israel and that three of them were killed.

Hamdi Shaqqura, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said his group was investigating reports that five other suspected collaborators were killed more than two weeks ago.

The center's director, Raji Sourani, wrote letters to Palestinian leaders Friday "demanding that they immediately and decisively intervene to stop such extrajudicial executions," according to a news release.

"In the middle of this onslaught on Gaza, we are in need to respect the rule of law and to respect human rights," Shaqqura said in an interview. "More than any other time, it's a challenge for us."

Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Yousur Alhlou, Ibrahim Barzak and Josef Federman of The Associated Press and by Fares Akram and Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times.

A Section on 08/23/2014