Israel News for 11-12-2019
News Update
An IDF airstrike in Gaza killed Islamic Jihad senior commander Bahaa Abu al-Atta early this morning, in the first targeted killing of terrorist leaders since 2014. PM Netanyahu said that Abu al-Atta was planning imminent attacks against Israel. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz tweeted his support of the killing, and said that Israel’s security supersedes all politics.
As of 1pm today, over 150 rockets had been fired into Israel from Gaza, in response to the assassination, of which the Iron Dome intercepted around 50.
Twenty-nine people were treated for light injuries in the rocket attacks. One person was hurt in a direct hit on the Route 4 highway at Gan Yavne next to the southern city of Ashdod and a 35-year-old man was wounded in Moshav Be’er Tuvia in southern Israel. Fifteen people were hurt as they ran for their bomb shelters and 13 people were treated for shock. A house in the southern community of Netivot sustained a direct hit from a rocket.
The IDF is expecting several days of fighting.
Shortly after the assassination in Gaza, a bomb exploded in the home of Islamic Jihad’s deputy leader Akram Al-Ajouri in Damascus. Two people were killed dead and six others injured, but it is unclear whether Al-Ajouri was one of the casualties.
In other news: Jordanian media is reporting that Jordanian intelligence recently foiled a plot by two suspected militants to mount terror attacks against U.S. and Israeli diplomats alongside U.S. troops deployed at a military base in the south of the country. The suspects had planned to drive vehicles into their targets and attack them with firearms and knives.
