TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- The Zionist military traded fire with Gaza fighters Tuesday in a flare-up following the martyrdom in Israeli custody of a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike.
The military said it hit Gaza with “tank fire” after rockets were launched from the Palestinian enclave in retaliation for the martyrdom.
The exchange of fire came hours after 45-year-old prisoner Khader Adnan died, nearly three months after being detained in the occupied West Bank over his ties to the Islamic Jihad resistance movement.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh described his death as a “deliberate assassination”, saying that the occupying regime of Israel had killed him “by rejecting his request for his release, neglecting him medically and keeping him in his cell, despite the seriousness of his health condition”.
News of his martyrdom was initially followed by three rockets fired by resistance fighters from Gaza, the Zionist military said.
The occupying regime’s tank fire was met with a further 22 projectiles launched from Gaza, the military reported.
A joint statement by resistance movements in Gaza, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said the rocket fire was an “initial response” to Adnan’s martyrdom.
The Magen David Adom emergency service said three people were wounded with shrapnel in the Sderot area, near the Gaza border.
After meeting with the military chief, war minister Yoav Gallant threatened Palestinians that would “will be sorry”
Israel’s jailers had announced the death of a detainee who was affiliated to Islamic Jihad, saying he was “found early this morning in his cell unconscious”.
Adnan was the first Palestinian to die as a direct result of a hunger strike, according to advocacy group the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Other Palestinian detainees have died “as a result of attempts to force feed them”, said the group’s director Qaddura Faris.
Palestinians launched a general strike in West Bank cities in response to Adnan’s death.
The Zionist regime’s extremist security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said prison officials decided to close cells to “prevent riots”.
“The directive to the prisoner service is zero tolerance towards hunger strikes and disturbances in security prisons,” he said.
Adnan was described by the official as an “operative” of Islamic Jihad, who was facing charges related to his activities within the resistance movement.
The Zionist regime has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and its forces regularly detain Palestinians, who are subject to Israeli military courts.
Islamic Jihad warned the occupying regime of Israel would “pay the price for this crime”.
Israel’s prison authorities said Adnan was in jail for the 10th time and his wife, Randa Mousa, previously told AFP her husband had carried out multiple hunger strikes in detention.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mousa said she was proud of her husband’s “martyrdom” which the family wears like “a crown on our heads”.
In his final message, Adnan said he was “sending you these words as my flesh and fat has melted”.
“I pray that God accepts me as a faithful martyr,” he wrote, in a message published Monday by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel said its medic visited Adnan and raised his “life-threatening condition and the need for immediate hospital transfer”.
Israeli rights group BTselem described his hunger strike as “a form of non-violent protest against his arrest and the injustices of the occupation”.
“The fact that a person whose life was in danger remained in prison despite repeated requests to transfer him to a hospital reflects the absolute disregard Israel held for his life,” the organization said.