Blast kills 15 Palestinians at Hamas rally in Gaza

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – An explosion at a militant Hamas rally
killed at least 15 Palestinians, including children and gunmen,
in the Gaza Strip on Friday in the first deadly incident in the
territory since Israel completed its withdrawal.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group and the
Palestinian interior ministry said Hamas was responsible.

“The Fatah Central Committee holds the Hamas movement fully
responsible for the victims of the military parade (that was
held) among civilians,” Fatah’s Central Committee said in a
statement.

Hamas said the explosion was the result of an Israeli
airstrike, while Israel denied all involvement.

The explosion in the densely packed Jabalya refugee camp,
which killed 15 people, including at least two children and
three militants, occurred after Islamic Jihad militants fired
rockets into Israel in retaliation for a deadly West Bank raid.

Senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, whose brother, a local
commander for the group, died in the blast, said Israeli drones
or helicopters targeted a vehicle carrying five Hamas gunmen.

He said that while Hamas would continue to honor an
eight-month ceasefire it had agreed to in February by request
of Abbas, it would still respond to Israeli attacks against
Palestinians.

Fatah’s Central Committee slammed Hamas for displaying
munitions at the rally, which marked a show of armed force by
the group following Israel’s Gaza pullout on September 12 after
38 years of occupation, among thousands of civilians.

“The Fatah Central Committee calls upon all groups to stop
these military parades and to put all weapons and explosives
away from residential neighborhoods,” the group said.

MORE THAN 60 WOUNDED

Medics said more than 60 people were wounded in the blast,
which wrecked the Hamas vehicle. But Rayan denied reports that
it had carried explosives, saying the vehicle only contained
plastic models of rockets that could not detonate.

Palestinian militants from the armed Popular Resistance
Committees group later fired several rockets into Israel in
response to the rally blast, calling on gunmen “to mount a fast
earth-quake like and painful reaction to the ugly massacre.”

Prior to the explosion, militants from Islamic Jihad
mounted the first rocket attack against Israel since the
withdrawal, in response to an Israeli raid in the West Bank
that killed three of its gunmen. It caused no casualties.

The Israeli army confirmed one rocket landed in a southern
Israeli town, causing no casualties. Such attacks have
decreased since militant groups agreed to the truce.

Palestinians are still celebrating Israel’s withdrawal from
Gaza, which Washington hopes could be a step to reviving a
stalled peace “road map.”

Palestinian authorities took charge on Friday of a border
crossing for the first time, processing thousands of travellers
from Gaza into Egypt following Israel’s pullout.

Israel had sealed the Rafah terminal, Gaza’s sole conduit
to the outside world via Egypt, before completing its removal
of forces, saying it would be shut for six months pending
renovations and proof Palestinians could rein in Gaza
militants.

But with Israel’s consent, the crossing was opened on
Friday for 48 hours to Palestinians who study, work or need
medical treatment in Egypt or elsewhere.

Palestinians hope Gaza will become the embryo of a state in
the territories Israel captured in the 1967 war. They want
their state to include the larger West Bank and Arab East
Jerusalem.

(Writing by Corinne Heller in Jerusalem, additional
reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah)