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Photos:
The apartment building in Rehovot that was hit by a rocked launched from Gaza on Thursday. Credit: Ilan Assayag Published by Haaretz

Scene. Published by IMEMC News
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by IMEMC News

An Israeli woman, 80, was killed, and eight people were injured, when a shell fired from the Gaza Strip hit an apartment building in Rehovot, in central Israel.

According to Israeli sources, one person, still unidentified, was killed after being trapped under rubble that fell from the damaged building. Seven people were treated on-site with light injuries, and one woman in her sixties was taken to the hospital with a head injury.

The Israeli military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, stated that the Israeli anti-missile defense system known as the ‘Iron Dome’ (funded largely by the United States), had experienced a malfunction on Thursday night.

The Israeli military’s “Home Front Command” Search and Rescue Unit were joined by police, Fire and Rescue Services to search in the rubble for additional victims, but no other injured Israelis were found.

The shell had been fired after three straight days of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the deaths of 31 Palestinians, including a number of young children and women.

The chair of the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yuli Edelstein, condemned the death of the Israeli man, saying, “My heart goes out to the family of the murdered person from the missile strike, and I am praying for the recovery of those injured.”

Edelstein went on to say, “The responsibility for the criminal and cowardly strike and murder lies with one source: Iran – the patron and financier of the Islamic Jihad. There lies the head of the snake, and we will work in every way to remove this threat from the people of Israel.”

Edelstein made no mention of the dozens of Palestinian civilians that had been killed by Israeli bombs over the past three days.

In addition to the shell that hit the building in Rehovot, three Israeli buildings in Sderot, near the border with Gaza, were hit by Palestinian shells, but no injuries were reported.
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Elderly Woman Killed, Eight Wounded After Rocket Hits Apartment in Central Israeli City

The hit follows Israel's airstrike assassination of the deputy commander of Islamic Jihad's rocket unit

by Ran Shimoni for Haaretz
May 11, 2023

An Israeli woman in her 80s was killed and eight people were wounded Thursday evening when a rocket launched from Gaza hit a residential building in the central city of Rehovot.

The victim was identified as Inga Avramyan. She was not in a protected area at the time of the strike.

The wounded were evacuated to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot.

In a statement after the rocket barrage, Palestinian Islamic Jihad said its military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, had “fulfilled its obligation toward the Palestinian fallen, both the commanders and the civilians.”

The statement, which called the rocket fire a “holy and blessed response,” said, “The Al-Quds Brigade fulfilled its duty and its promise to avenge the Palestinian martyrs, both civilians and combatants.”

Earlier in the day, the IDF and Shin Bet killed the deputy commander of the Islamic Jihad’s rocket forces, Ahmed Abu Daqqah, according to Palestinian reports. He was killed in an attack on his home in Khan Younis, which also wounded four people including a woman and two girls.

The IDF said in a statement that Abu Daqqah was the deputy of Ali Ghali, head of the Islamic Jihad’s rocket forces, who was killed in an attack carried out by the IDF and Shin Bet on Wednesday night in the same city.

Egyptian sources involved in the efforts to reach a cease-fire between Israel and Islamic Jihad told Haaretz that reports of an imminent agreement were premature, and the negotiations between the two sides were still underway.

The Islamic Jihad representative in Egypt, Dr. Muhammad Alhandi, a member of the organization’s political bureau, arrived in Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian intelligence to conduct the negotiations, Islamic Jihad sources said. Alhandi has been conducting the negotiations in coordination with the secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah.

The sources said the organization has set conditions for a cease-fire: a halt to Israel’s targeted killings of Islamic Jihad militants in the Gaza Strip, and the transfer of the body of Khader Adnan, an Islamic Jihad hunger striker whose May 2 death in an Israeli prison set the current round of fighting in motion.