Hamas ends truce with Israel

GlobalPost

The military wing of Hamas has announced that they are calling off their de facto two-year truce with Israel following two days of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

"There is no longer any truce with the enemy," the organization said in a statement broadcast over a Hamas radio station early on Saturday, according to the Jerusalem Post.

At least 11 Palestinians have been killed and 30 injured in the past 24 hours by attacks from Israeli jets, and four Israelis have been injured by rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, according to Al Jazeera.

Israeli planes have been pounding the Gaza strip in response to the most deadly attack in Israel since 2008.

(More from GlobalPost: Israel launches retaliatory air strikes after gunmen kill 7 (VIDEO))

On Thursday, gunmen and suicide bombers killed eight Israelis, including six civilians and two soldiers, in a series of attacks on vehicles north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat. More than 40 Israelis were also wounded.

According to Al Jazeera:

Israel said the attackers had infiltrated from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and vowed, and officials vowed to "hunt down" the perpetrators. Israeli officials have blamed a Gaza-based militant group called the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) for Thursday's attacks, although the faction has denied any involvement. The PRC is not affiliated with the Hamas movement that governs Gaza.

Six PRC members, including the group’s military commander, were killed in Israel’s first air strike on Gaza on Thursday, according to the group’s spokesman and medical officials in Gaza.

After Thursday’s attack, the Israeli military killed at least four of the 10 attackers in the desert near the Egyptian border, and possibly two attackers were shot by Egyptian soldiers. However, Egyptian officials said five Egyptian security officers were also killed when Israeli aircraft fired at suspected militants who fled into a crowd of security personnel at the Sinai border.

On Friday, Egypt registered a formal complaint with Israel over the killings of its security officers and demanded an immediate investigation, the New York Times reports. A few hundred people protested outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo on Friday night, and two Egyptian presidential candidates denounced the deaths.
 

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