BICOM

The Israel Defence Forces carried out two airstrikes on targets in the Gaza Strip yesterday. The first killed Abdullah Talbani, confirmed in Palestinian media reports as an operative of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The second strike, according to IDF sources, targeted two operatives described as members of the ‘Global Jihad terror movement in the northern Gaza Strip’. The two were named as Rami Daud Jaber Kaferana, of the Jebaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, and Hazzam Muhammad Saadi al-Shaker of Beit Hanun, a village bordering Jebaliya.  Eight other people were wounded. According to the IDF, the individuals targeted in the second strike were involved in attempting to carry out a terror attack on the Israel-Egypt border. Following the attack, a Qassam rocket fell in the western Negev this morning, but failed to explode.

It is noteworthy that the operatives targeted in the second attack were both former Hamas members.  Many members of extreme Sunni Islamist Salafi organizations in the Gaza Strip are former operatives of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, who left the organisation because of its situation of de facto ceasefire with Israel. Since the collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, violent Jihadi extremists from Gaza have taken advantage of weak governance in the Sinai Peninsula by coordinating with extremists in the Sinai to launch attacks on Israel.

In additional Gaza-related news, Haaretz today noted that Sudanese media outlets are reporting that the Israel Air Force struck at two Gaza bound arms convoys in Sudan last month.  The Sudanese military have dismissed the reports. Sudan has been used in the past as part of an overland route bringing Iranian arms to the Gaza Strip. Israel reportedly destroyed an arms convoy en route to Gaza via Sudan in September, 2009.