Hamas releases video of guided-missile striking Israeli military bus

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.

The death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip rose on Tuesday to six in less than 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

The ministry identified the sixth Palestinian victim as Mossaab Hus, 20.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli raid killed a 26-year-old Palestinian youth, named as Khaled Riyadh, who was tending to his farm in the al-Salatin neighborhood in the enclave’s north.

In retaliation, Palestinian resistance fighters have fired about 400 projectiles into the Israeli occupied territories amid the latest escalation in the conflict.

Reuters said the firefight has killed only one Israeli, while the armed wing of Hamas said two Israelis were killed and 19 more wounded in Ashkelon.

Ezzedine al-Qassam has, meanwhile, released a statement in Hebrew, urging the settlers to move out of the city.

The Israeli regime has been using the city to “perpetrate crimes” against Palestinian civilians, it said, adding that the Brigades was forced to respond.

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