JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s military fired on what it called terror sites in Gaza in retaliation for the murder by a Palestinian sniper of an Israeli man who was making repairs to the security fence.
The Israeli man, identified as Salah Abu Latif, 22, was killed Tuesday afternoon by a single gunshot to his chest. A civilian employee of the Israeli Defense Ministry, he was airlifted to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where he died of his injury.
Israel Air Force aircrafts and IDF tanks and infantry fired on a weapon manufacturing facility and a military target in the southern Gaza Strip, terror training and military sites in the central Gaza Strip, and a concealed rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip. Direct hits were confirmed, according to the IDF.
A three-year-old Palestinian girl was killed in a strike near the al-Maghazi refugee camp, the Palestinian Ma’an news service reported.
“This is a very severe incident and we will not let it go unanswered. Our policy until now has been to act to thwart such incidents beforehand and to respond in force and this is how we will act regarding this incident as well,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement following the shooting.
The incident occurred near Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The fence had been damaged by recent winter storms.
The shooting occurred after a series of terror incidents in Israel. On Sunday, a bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, Border Police guards thwarted a stabbing attack in Jerusalem and a rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel, landing near a school bus stop.
On Monday, an Israeli policeman was stabbed in the back in the West Bank.
