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Palestinian farmers incur losses worth $2.5 million due to Israeli bombardment

July 4, 2014 at 11:25 am

Mohammed Al-Shaer, the director of Al-Mohararat agricultural region in Gaza, has said that the value of the losses caused by Israeli raids this week is estimated at $2.5 million.

Al-Shaer told Anadolu news agency that on Tuesday Israeli planes launched about 30 rockets targeting the region of A’ein Galot, located west of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip. The raid injured four workers and caused serious material damages.

He added, “the infrastructure suffered significant damages at the level of the irrigation network, electricity network, tractors, generators and stored vegetables, in addition to damaging about 60 thousand square meters of agricultural land planted with citrus fruits.”

For his part, farmer Maher Abu Hadid said that his own farm of 80 thousand square meters “was heavily hit by the Israeli attack”.

He told Anadolu, “When I arrived to my farm in the early morning, I was shocked over the way it was subjected to bombings by the Israeli aircrafts, leaving the stores, farm tractor, agricultural crops and greenhouses nearly destroyed in full.”

Since the kidnapping of three Israeli settlers on 12 June in the city of Hebron in the southern region of the occupied West Bank, who were found dead a few days ago, the Gaza Strip has witnessed an Israeli military escalation, which, so far, has led to the death of three Palestinians and left dozens wounded. The latest of the attacks took place on Thursday when ten Palestinians were injured in nine raids that targeted different areas.

Israel accuses Hamas, which controls Gaza, of being behind the kidnap and murder of the three settlers. While the movement has denied the accusations, apparently Israel does not accept Hamas’s denial and has continued with its military operations against Hamas in the West Bank, as well as threatened to further attack the Gaza Strip.