Eleven people, including two children, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday in the deadliest air strike this year by the Israeli military in the territory.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swiftly condemned the strike as ”state terrorism” and called on the international community to intervene.
The casualties occurred when two rockets hit a car carrying three members of the Islamic Jihad militant group, which was travelling on the main thoroughfare dissecting the coastal strip just north of Gaza City, Khaled al-Batch, a top official of the group, told Agence France-Presse.
Two of the militants, Hammudeh al-Wadyeh (25) and Shawqi al-Saiqali, also in his 20s, were killed as a result, al-Batch said. The third man was injured.
Nine civilians, including two children, were killed and 42 injured when a third rocket struck as onlookers gathered on the scene, witnesses and medical sources said.
The civilians included two brothers, 4-year-old Hisham and 8-year-old Shaher al-Mugrabi, and their father Ashraf, said Jumaa al-Saqaa, a doctor at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza treating the wounded.
An ambulance driver, Mussa Nasrallah, was also killed, he said.
The Israeli army told AFP that the military had carried out an operation against a vehicle that was transporting militants who were getting ready to fire rockets into Israel.
A spokesperson said the car ”was loaded with Katyuashas”, referring to the Russian-made rocket launchers that have a much longer range than the usual makeshift missiles fired by Palestinian factions.
The army said that 38 makeshift rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel during the past 24 hours and more than a 100 since last Friday.
”What Israel is doing is called state terrorism,” Abbas told reporters at his office in Gaza. ”This state terrorism will not shake us.”
Earlier, his spokesperson said the Palestinian leader called on the international community to ”intervene immediately to put an end to the Israeli aggression and escalation”.
Separately on Tuesday, four people were reported by witnesses to have been injured in an air strike near Beit Lahiya, also in northern Gaza. The Israeli military did not confirm carrying out the second attack.
The Israeli military regularly carries out raids against militants in the densely populated coastal strip. Palestinian militants often fire rockets into Israel from the north of the territory.
Tuesday’s deaths bring to 5 105 the number of people, the majority of them Palestinians, who have been killed since the start of the Intifada in September 2000, according to an AFP count. — AFP
