GAZA: An Israeli air strike yesterday killed three Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, the Islamic Jihad group said. The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted Islamic Jihad members after they had fired a mortar bomb at troops. “Direct hits were confirmed,” it said. Islamic Jihad said its men had attacked Israeli soldiers who had entered the Gaza Strip through Israel’s border fence. Earlier, the territory’s ruling Hamas Islamist movement said an Israeli drone had crashed on the Gaza side of the frontier. The military said the drone came down because of a technical malfunction. Hours after the Israeli airstrike, a blast in a second-storey apartment killed three other Gaza militants belonging to a small Jihadi group. The cause of the explosion was not clear, but Hamas said it could have been “an internal” incident, suggesting explosives that were in the house had detonated.
Pro-Mursi rioters jailed
for three years
CAIRO: An Egyptian court jailed 77 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi yesterday for three years for rioting during deadly clashes in Cairo that killed dozens last August. The court also ordered that they report to police regularly for another three years after their release. The fighting erupted in the days following August 14, when hundreds died in clashes when security forces stormed two sit-ins demanding Mursi’s reinstatement after his ouster by the military in July. The defendants were arrested in central Cairo as they marched toward the Al Fath mosque in the Ramses area. Separately, a criminal court in the southern city of Assiut sentenced 10 students from Al Azhar University to three years for being members of a banned group and obstructing public work.
Agencies
