IDF: Samhadana was planning attack when IAF hit PRC base

The Popular Resistance Committees, whose training base the Israel Air Force bombed Thursday night, was in advanced stages of planning a major attack inside Israel. The head of the Israel Defense Forces Southern Command, Yoav Galant, said Friday that Jamal Abu Samhadana, the PRC commander who was killed in the strike along with three senior operatives, was at the base on the ruins of a Gush Katif settlement to view the cell as it practiced infiltrating into Israel.

Galant said the training included using ladders to climb over the border. The method is similar to that used by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in March 2002 to breach the Lebanon border in an attack in which five Israeli civilians and one IDF officer were killed. They employed a crane-operated ladder that enabled them to cross the border without being detected. According to Galant, the cell planned to carry out a suicide attack inside Israel using explosives.

Israeli military sources refused to comment on whether the IDF had known Samhadana was at the camp. Apparently, his presence was not known at the time of the attack and reports of his death came as a surprise to the IDF.

The PRC was created in Rafah in late 2000, soon after the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Samhadana established it as a local offshoot of Fatah, but it quickly became independent. In recent years it has become closer to Hamas. The Shin Bet security services and the IDF believe Samhadana and his organization were responsible for hundreds of attacks including rocket and mortar fire, the use of roadside bombs, small arms fire and suicide bombings.


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