A Palestinian woman was killed and 14 other people, including children, were wounded on Wednesday in a fresh Israeli air strike in the southern Gaza Strip, local medical sources and witnesses said.
The sources said a missile, fired by an Israeli aircraft towards a car, instead slammed into a house near the town of Khan Yunis, killing 27-year-old Fatima al-Barbarawi and injuring 14 other people.
Medics said children aged one, two and four were also among the wounded.
A vehicle travelling at the time of the attack and carrying militants from an armed group, sped off from the scene of the explosion, witnesses said.
Although there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, Palestinian security sources said a rocket fired by an Israeli aircraft took aim at a car, missed its target and struck a house.
Israel had previously threatened to wage tougher strikes against militants, faced with an upsurge in cross-border violence that has seen about 140 rockets launched at the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip.
Three Palestinian children were killed in an Israeli air strike over the Gaza Strip late on Tuesday in which two militants from a cell from the radical Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades managed to escape.
Those deaths incurred heavy international condemnation and caused further embarrassment for Israel following a series of deaths of children and innocent Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Nine civilians were killed in an air raid on June 13, four days after another eight died in an explosion while picnicking on the beach in an attack a rights group blamed on an Israeli shell.
Wednesday’s latest death brings to 5Â 115 the total toll since the start of the Palestinian intifada in September 2000, according to an Agence France-Presse count. — AFP