This morning, Israel carried out a targeted assassination of the senior military commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Shajiaya, in the north of the besieged Gaza Strip. Bahaa Abu al-Ata, 42 and his wife Asma Mohammed, 39 were killed as a bomb struck their home in the early hours of this morning. Syrian state media reported that several hours later, two rockets were fired from Israeli war planes in the Galilee, targeting the home of senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Akram Ajouri in Damascus. The attack in Gaza was described by Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus as “surgical”: carried out against an individual who they believed was planning an imminent attack on Israel. Bahaa Abu al-Ata was described as ‘a ticking bomb’, and the assassination as ‘a pre-emptive strike aimed to kill a senior military commander’.
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