GAZA CITY — The Israel Air Force is using
unmanned combat aerial vehicles in the military operation in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said.
The sources said Israel used UCAVs to fire air-to-ground missiles
at insurgency targets in the Gaza Strip at
least twice over the weekend.
The UCAVs were said to have been operated against both Fatah and Hamas
targets. At least four Palestinian operatives were killed.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Israeli UAVs fired missiles
toward insurgency targets in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 13 and Oct. 14. The
center said that in the first attack three Hamas operatives were killed in
the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
"According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 09:20
on Friday, 13 October 2006, an IOF [Israeli occupation force] drone fired a
missile at a civilian car that was traveling in the center of the northern
Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia," the group said in a statement on Oct. 15.
"The missile hit the car and killed the three passengers."
The center said in the Oct. 14 attack, a member of Fatah's Mujahideen
Brigade was killed by two missiles fired by an unidentified Israeli UAV.
Another Fatah fighter as well as three others were said to have been
injured.
Industry sources said the Israel Air Force has been using UAVs as
missile platforms since at least 2004. The sources said the air force
converted the Hermes 450 UAV, manufactured by Elbit Systems, into a combat
platform.
The air force has not acknowledged the use of UCAVs in the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli military statement merely said the "air strike was launched
against a vehicle transporting terrorist activists in Gaza City."
The UCAVs were used as part of the Israeli military offensive in the
Gaza Strip designed to destroy missile production facilities. The offensive
has included an Israeli armor incursion into the northern Gaza town of Beit
Hanoun, Jabalya refugee camp and near Rafah in the south.
"Hamas, which is reinforcing itself, constitutes a threat to Israel's
security," Amos Gilad, director of the Defense Ministry's political-military
division, said, "Our priority is now to make it more and more difficult for
the continuation of terrorism."
