Israeli aircraft bombed a building in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip yesterday that the military said had been used by Palestinians to access a tunnel intended for cross-border attacks in Israel.
The air strike, in which no one was hurt, took place in the early hours shortly after Hamas said unidentified Palestinians had set off explosive devices at two of its security compounds in Gaza City.
With an Egyptian-mediated truce mostly holding since its war with Israel early this year, Hamas has cracked down on perceived internal threats from the rival secular Fatah faction and breakaway Islamists aligned with al-Qaeda.
Hamas described the target of the Israeli air strike as “open ground,” but witnesses said it was a building with two rooms and a courtyard, which were ravaged by the attack.
The Israeli military said in a statement its air force carried out the strike in response to a rocket fired from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, which caused no damage. There was no claim of responsibility for the rocket attack from any Palestinian faction.
“The tunnel was intended to be used for an infiltration into Israeli territory in order to execute a terrorist attack,” the statement said. “It was dug from underneath a building located 1.5 kilometers away from the security fence.”
An Israeli security source said intelligence indicated the tunnel had been dug by several Palestinian factions other than Hamas.
Hamas shuns the Jewish state but has signaled a willingness to enter into a long-term truce. Egypt and Germany are trying to broker the release by the Islamist group of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in a cross-border tunnel raid in June 2006, in exchange for freeing hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Earlier yesterday, Hamas said unidentified individuals set off bombs at its Ansar-2 jail and the Gaza residence of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has stayed away from the territory since his Fatah faction was forced out by Hamas in a 2007 civil war.
No one was hurt in the blasts, which residents described as sounding like hand-laid bombs or grenades. Israeli military sources denied involvement.
Hamas crushed Fatah in a 2006 vote only to find itself isolated by the West for refusing to make peace with Israel.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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