Eleven women and children were among 17 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza yesterday, hiking the overall death toll to 38 in two days, the emergency services said.
More than 300 people have been wounded. Among the dead was at least one militant, as well as six children and five women, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. It was not immediately clear whether the other five fatalities were civilians or militants.
The deadliest single strike took place shortly after midnight when a missile slammed into a house in the northern town of Beit Hanun, killing Hafez Hammad, a senior Islamic Jihad commander, and five of his family members, including two women and two children.
In another series of raids to the north and east of Gaza City, Israeli warplanes killed two more women and four children, Qudra said.
Two brothers, Mohammed Aarif, 13, and Amir, 12, were killed in an air strike on Shejaiya, east of Gaza City, while another strike in the nearby Zeitun District killed Amina Malaka, 27, and her 18-month-old son Mohammed, he said.
Further north, another missile hit Beit Hanun, killing 40-year-old Sahar al-Masri and her 14-year-old son Ibrahim, he added.
Overnight, Israeli warplanes struck 160 targets, raising the overall number of strikes to 430 since the launch of Operation Protective Edge in the early hours of Tuesday.
Since midnight, at least 10 rockets struck Israel, and another 16 were shot down by Iron Dome, two of them over the Tel Aviv area, an army spokeswoman said.
Israeli media reported that two rockets crashed into the sea yesterday off the northern port city of Haifa, about 165km north of Gaza.
If confirmed, it would be the furthest a rocket fired from Gaza has ever traveled.
Throughout Tuesday, 117 rockets struck Israel, with 45 of them targeting major cities in the center, among them Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well as Hadera, 116km to the north.
Another 45 missiles were shot down by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. On Tuesday, 21 Palestinians were killed, including 17 in strikes on Gaza, as well as four Hamas militants who were shot dead after infiltrating southern Israel by sea.
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