One Palestinian was killed and 13 were wounded on Sunday in Israeli air strikes over the Gaza Strip as the military pressed on with an offensive to win back a soldier and stop rocket attacks.
GAZA CITY: One Palestinian was killed and 13 were wounded on Sunday in Israeli air strikes over the Gaza Strip as the military pressed on with an offensive to win back a soldier and stop rocket attacks.
Witnesses said an Israeli drone fired a missile at a car carrying three members of the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement just outside the southern Gaza town of Rafah near a disbanded international airport.
The three managed to flee the car but were hit by a second rocket, which also hit bystanders, the witnesses said. One bystander, Bilal Sliman Rabah, 18, was killed and seven people were wounded, including one in a critical condition, medical sources said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the air force carried out an air raid "against a group of gunmen" in the area.
The latest death brought the overall number of Israelis and Palestinians killed since the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000 to 5,176, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
Four Palestinians from a the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militant faction, which is loosely affiliated to president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party were wounded in an earlier air strike in Gaza City, local officials said.
Israeli aircraft overnight attacked several targets in the Palestinian territory, including a Fatah building which the army said was used to direct "terror activity against Israel" near the southern town of Khan Yunis.
Aircraft also attacked a bridge in northern Gaza to prevent militants from accessing areas used to fire rockets towards Israel, the army said.
The air force also attacked two armed Palestinian cells west of the main export transit terminal of Karni, a spokesman added.
Palestinian militants on Sunday, however, fired two rockets into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, lightly wounding one civilian, the army said. The armed wing of the governing Palestinian movement Hamas later claimed in a statement to have fired four rockets at Sderot, the home town of Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz.
"We announce our responsibility and we promise God we will continue to avenge and stop the Zionist aggression against the Gaza Strip," said the statement from the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
In total, militants have launched 30 makeshift rockets at Israel since the army began a vast military operation in the northern Gaza Strip late Wednesday to stop rocket attacks and retrieve an abducted soldier.
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