Israeli forces discovered two explosive devices on separate beaches in southern Israel on Monday, sources said 48 hours after a group of factions told Ma'an they launched a barrage in the same area.
Early Monday, Israeli civilians reported seeing a suspicious object lying on the Barnea beach, a public beach in the coastal city of Ashkelon, which police later determined to be an explosive device, Israeli military sources told Ma'an.
The device, along with a similar object located on a beach in the southern Israeli port town of Ashdod, was reportedly detonated in a controlled manner by the Israeli police sometime on Monday.
Israeli security sources linked the discoveries to an announcement 48 hours earlier by a number of armed groups in Gaza who claimed to have fired eight shells at the port of Ashkelon between 29-30 January. At the time, however, the Israeli military indicated it was not familiar with any such attack.
The attack was undertaken in retaliation for the assassinations of three prominent Fatah operatives in the northern West Bank city of Nablus in late December, the groups told Ma'an in a joint statement, which was issued by the military wings of Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Resistance Committees. |