An Israeli air strike killed three Palestinians today,
bringing the toll from Israeli new operation against Gaza militants to
11 dead and at least 100 wounded, medical officials said.
The
armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said that the
three men were all members and were hit as they travelled in a
motorcycle-taxi.
The Israeli military had launched
its operation yesterday with the killing of a top Hamas commander
followed by what Palestinians said were at least 60 Israeli air strikes.
Ahmed
Jaabari, the operational commander of Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine
al-Qassam Brigades, was killed along with his bodyguard, Mohammed
al-Hams, in an initial Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, the
Islamist movement said.
Shortly afterwards, Israel
pounded the Gaza Strip with more strikes, killing five more people, two
of them children, Hamas Health Minister Mufid Mukhalalati said in a
televised press conference at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital.
Yesterday medics reported another fatality in the wave of strikes on targets across the territory.
Hospitals
and medical centres across Gaza were put on high alert after the
initial strikes as Israel warned the hit on Jaabari was only “the
beginning” and said “a significant number” of arms dumps were within
civilian and residential areas.
Hamas’s Al-Aqsa
television showed ambulances racing through the streets on Wednesday,
transporting casualties to crowded emergency rooms, including at the
Shifa hospital.
A man wearing blue pyjamas was seen
carrying his son and two men supported an elderly man as he struggled to
move away from the site of one explosion.
The
attacks came after a flare-up in violence between Israel and Gaza-based
groups, which saw more than 120 rockets fired from the Palestinian
territory into the Jewish state, and Israeli air strikes and shelling
that killed seven people.
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