The Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committee terrorist organization denied on Friday that it was behind the multiple terror attacks which killed eight people in southern Israel on Thursday.
“We salute (the operation) and we are proud of it, but we do not claim it,” Abu Mujahid, a spokesperson for the organization told AFP.
He added, “The occupation wants to pin this operation on us in order to escape its own internal problems.”
He made the comments at the funeral of five of the group’s members who were killed in an Israeli retaliation shortly after the terrorist attacks.
That attack killed top terrorist Abu Awad Kamel a-Neirab, commander of the organization’s “military” wing. He was killed while meeting in a house along with other terrorist heads of the group. Also killed was a child who was with them, although it was clear that keeping the child there was placing him in danger.
In a short statement he made after the attack, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “We all witnessed an attempt to ratchet up the level of terror emanating from Sinai. If someone thinks that Israel will put up with this, he is wrong.
“I have established a principle: when Israeli citizens are hurt, we hit back immediately, and with force. This principle was implemented today. The people who gave the order to murder our civilians, who were hiding in Gaza, are no longer among the living,” Netanyahu said.
He reiterated those comments on Friday in a meeting with soldiers who were wounded in the attacks and are currently hospitalized in the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva.
“IDF soldiers and YAMAM warriors reacted immediately yesterday,” said Netanyahu. “We killed the leaders of the organization that sent the terrorists. But that is only the first response. We have a policy to charge a very high price from those who hurt us and this policy is implemented.”
(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)