Turkey strongly condemns Israel over its air strikes in Gaza but fails to condemn Hamas' rocket and mortar firing terrorists.
(INN) Turkey strongly condemned Israel over its air strikes in Gaza over the weekend, but conveniently forgot to condemn the Gaza terrorists for continuously hitting southern Israel with rockets and mortars.
A report in the Turkish Today’s Zaman newspaper said Turkey is concerned over new and dangerous escalation of violence in Gaza.
A statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and quoted by the newspaper noted that the ministry strongly condemns what it termed the “disproportionate and indiscriminate retaliatory attacks on Gaza that cause death to Palestinian civilians.”
The statement said the new cycle of violence in the region will benefit no one who is siding with peace and called on the international community not to remain indifferent to attacks and display necessary reaction.
“We ask Israel once again to end its inhumane and unacceptable policies toward Gaza,” the statement said.
The Turkish statement did not at all condemn the Gaza terrorists, who continued to pummel southern Israel with rocket fire on the Sabbath. They fired over 100 rockets since the IAF killed Zuheir al-Qaisi, the terrorist who was head of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), on Friday. Al Qaisi was killed following intelligence that the PRC was about to launch a deadly attack on Highway 12, which straddles the border with Egypt. His targetting was also a feat of Israeli intelligence.
The IDF's English-language website counted approximately 135 rockets by 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Israel time), 74 of which struck within Israel. It said the Iron Dome system intercepted the rockets in 28 out of 31 attempts to do so. The Iron Dome is capable of differentiating between rockets that will hit civilian areas and those that will land in open fields.
Eight Israelis have been wounded by the rockets. Most suffered light to moderate wounds. One, a foreign worker, was seriously injured.
The Bethlehem-based Ma'an news service reported that 15 Arabs have been killed in IAF airstrikes over the weekend.
Late Saturday night it was reported that Gaza’s Hamas terror rulers are trying to reach a ceasefire through Egyptian mediation.
