The Islamist group Hamas has released what it says is a video of its missile attack on an Israeli military bus near Gaza, amid a flare up of violence between the 2 sides.The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement has released a video of a guided-missile strike it has carried out against a bus carrying Israeli forces in retaliation for the regime’s earlier incursion into the Gaza Strip.
The footage released on Tuesday shows the vehicle being hit by the missile and erupting into flames as it is moving in the city of Jabalia, north of Gaza City, Gaza Strip.
The group’s military wing, Ezzedine al-Qassam
Brigades, said it had used a Kornet man-portable anti-tank missile to target the military bus, adding that all its occupants had died during the retaliatory attack.
The Qassam Brigades said in the statement that the counter-raid was in response to a Sunday Israeli attack that killed seven of its members. Reuters, however, cited the Israeli military as saying that only one “Israeli soldier was wounded in the incident.”
Israeli media had earlier claimed that the bus was carrying Israeli settlers.
What prompted the retaliation?
The Brigades said in the statement that the counter-raid was in response to an Israeli attack that killed seven of its members on Sunday.
The operation saw Israeli special forces infiltrate the Gaza Strip in a civilian car before killing senior Ezzedine al-Qassam commander Nour Baraka in a drive-by shooting near the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
Hamas started to retaliate as the Israeli forces were beating a retreat. Israeli aircraft covered the retreat from above, killing six more members of the Brigades, including another commander Mohammad al-Qarra.
The Israeli military’s incursion promoted the worst exchange of fire between the Gaza-based resistance fighters and Israel since the regime’s 2014 war on the blockaded coastal enclave.