"They were handling the launchers and they obviously hadn't come to slide on
them," he said. "Every Palestinian, including the militants, knows that
anyone who hangs around these launchers is endangering themselves."

IAF strike kills top Hamas commander in Gaza City
Haaretz Last update - 07:45 22/08/2007
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/896224.html

Israeli forces combating Palestinian gunmen in Gaza killed a Hamas militant
in an airstrike early Wednesday, after killing two children and three
militants a day earlier.

Hamas identified the militant killed Wednesday as Yehia Habib, a senior
field commander in Gaza City. Three other militants were wounded.

Israel said it struck a group of armed men who had approached the border
fence with Israel.

The attack took place hours after troops killed a 9-year-old and a
12-year-old as they tried to collect Qassam rocket launchers. The children
were killed on Tuesday the afternoon by an IDF tank in the northern Gaza
Strip. The two were seen moving in a field near Beit Hanun toward rocket
launchers immediately after Qassam rockets had been fired on towns in
Israel.

The rockets struck the area near Kibbutz Zikim, south of Ashkelon. There
were no injuries or damage.

Soon after the launch, an IDF force identified the source of the rocket
fire, surveyed the area, and identified a number of suspicious figures near
the launchers. A tank in the area fired a round, which killed the two
children. Another child was seriously injured in the incident.

"Children have no business being near Qassam rocket launchers," IDF officers
said in a statement last night.

They said it is possible that Islamic Jihad had hired the children to
collect the launchers after the launch. This phenomenon had already been
observed in other instances, the IDF officers said.

The tank fired at the figures only after they were seen close to the
launchers, IDF sources said.

The only reason anyone approaches the launchers after rockets are fired is
to collect them or reload them, the sources said, so there was no way to
avoid shooting at the people near the launchers.

"If these were children or youths, we regret the use that the terrorist
groups are making of them," a statement from the IDF spokesman read Tuesday.

An IDF source said that troops that had carried out the operation identified
the figures next to the launchers as militants. "They were handling the
launchers and they obviously hadn't come to slide on them," he said. "Every
Palestinian, including the militants, knows that anyone who hangs around
these launchers is endangering themselves."

According to IDF analysts, Tuesday's rocket attack against Israel was
carried out by the Jerusalem Battalions of the Islamic Jihad.

They said that the militants fled as soon as the rockets were launched.

"This is a cynical use of children but we are no longer surprised by
anything we see. A 14-year-old child has already fired an RPG rocket against
an IDF force, a grandmother aged close to 70 fired a light weapon against a
Givati [Brigade] force recently in the Strip. What were these children doing
there anyway? The militants fled immediately after the launch and then sent
the children to collect the launchers," one of the sources added.

In another Qassam rocket attack, against the western Negev, one rocket hit a
kindergarten in Sderot, causing damage. No injuries were reported because
the children are still on summer vacation and the kindergarten was empty.
The second Qassam landed in fields.

Palestinian militants have also fired several mortar shells at the western
Negev, causing no injuries or damage.

Earlier Tuesday, IDF troops killed three Palestinian militants near the
security fence in the southern Gaza Strip, near Khan Yunis.

According to the IDF, the militants were members of Islamic Jihad and were
trying to carry out a shooting attack against Israeli targets near the
fence. The army said the militants belong to a cell that had carried out
such attacks in the past.

The incident began when the vehicle the three were in was spotted and
attacked from the air. The three managed to flee, but they were intercepted
by an IDF force in the fields.

A fourth militant was injured in the incident.

A spokesman for Islamic Jihad said that the four were on a "jihad-related"
activity.

"The blood of our martyrs will be avenged," a statement read.

IDF troops found three sniper rifles in searches of the area following the
incident, the army said.

On Monday night, Israel's Channel 2 television reported that six Hamas men
killed in an Israeli attack earlier in the day were members of a sniper
unit.

The six militants were killed and another was wounded in an IDF rocket
strike on a car traveling in the central Gaza Strip.

In an incident in the West Bank city of Nablus early Tuesday, IDF troops
shot and killed a Palestinian gunman.

The soldiers operating in the Al-Ein refugee camp saw a Palestinian gunman
who fired at them before they returned fire and hit him, the army said.

The militant was identified as 38-year-old Nasser Mabrouk, a member of an
offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.