Dubai: Eleven women and children were among 17 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza on Wednesday, hiking the overall death toll to 38 in two days, the emergency services said. More than 300 people have been wounded in the offensive that began early Tuesday.
Among the dead was at least one fighter, 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 fighters.
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 Hamad, 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, Mohammad Aarif, 13 and 12-year-old Amir 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 Mohammad, he said.
Overnight, Israeli warplanes struck 160 targets, raising the overall number of strikes to 430 since the launch of Operation Protective Edge.
Since midnight, at least 10 rockets fired from Gaza struck Israel, and another 16 were shot down by Israeli missile defence systems. Two rockets were brought down over the Tel Aviv area.
Israeli media reported that two rockets crashed into the sea Wednesday off the northern port city of Haifa, some 165 kilometres north of Gaza. If confirmed, it would be the furthest a rocket fired from Gaza has ever travelled.
Israel’s defence minister warned the offensive would be long-term.
“The operation against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organisation will pay will be very high,” Moshe Yaalon said.
But the severity of the offensive so far has brought condemnation from a number of capitals.
US President Barack Obama, writing in a German newspaper article to be published Thursday, urged both sides in the conflict to show restraint and not act in a spirit of revenge.
“At this time of danger, everyone involved must protect the innocent and act in a sensible and measured way, not with revenge and retaliation,” Obama wrote. “Both sides must be prepared to accept risks for peace,” read the extracts from the article which were published in German.
On Wednesday Jordan, one of just two Arab countries to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s “barbaric aggression” in Gaza.
Iran’s foreign ministry Wednesday condemned the air raids and called on the West to urge the Jewish state to prevent a “human catastrophe”.
“We are, unfortunately, witnessing the escalation of savage aggression by the Zionists in recent days against the innocent and defenceless people of Palestine,” ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said in her weekly briefing with reporters.
— Compiled from agencies
