GAZA/JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – Hamas-led gunmen in Gaza executed 18 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel yesterday, accelerating a crackdown on suspected informers after Israeli forces tracked down and killed three senior Hamas commanders.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to escalate the fight against Hamas, vowing the group would “pay a heavy price” after a four-year-old Israeli boy was killed by a mortar attack from Gaza, the first Israeli child to die in the six-week conflict.
Shortly after his remarks, Palestinian officials said Israel had flattened a house in a Gaza City air strike, wounding at least 40 people.
With protesters from rocket-hit southern Israeli communities gathered outside his residence in Jerusalem after the boy’s killing, Netanyahu was under pressure to take tougher steps to end the rocket fire.
Israel’s military spokesman said another ground war was possible if necessary to stop the rocket fire.
Earlier in Gaza, masked militants dressed in black executed seven suspected collaborators, shooting the hooded and bound victims in a busy square outside a mosque after Friday prayers.
Television footage showed a crowd of young boys gathered where the executions took place moments afterwards, blood still running on the street and bullet casings scattered around.
Those deaths followed the killing of 11 alleged informers at an abandoned police station outside Gaza City, marking the third time this month that Hamas-led operatives have executed people suspected of providing intelligence to Israel.
Al Majd, a website linked to Hamas’s internal security service, said “the resistance” – a term for all Palestinian militant groups – had begun an operation dubbed “strangling the necks” to clamp down on anyone collaborating with Israel.
Over the years, Israel has established a network of contacts in the Palestinian territories, using a combination of pressure and sweeteners to entice Palestinians to divulge intelligence.
