Israel bombed the offices of Hamas lawmakers, destroyed a bridge and fired a tank shell that killed one Palestinian on Friday as part of a Gaza Strip offensive aimed at forcing militants to release a captured soldier. Israeli forces withdrew overnight from central Gaza after two days of fighting, and an army statement said the troops had ”currently completed their activities in the area”.
Israel targeted Hamas’s top commanders in a Gaza air strike on Wednesday that killed six Palestinians and reduced to rubble a three-storey building where the militants were believed to be meeting. The Israeli military said the attack wounded Mohammad Deif, leader of the governing Hamas movement’s armed wing and Israel’s most wanted man