At least 12 Palestinians, including two militant leaders, have been killed and a dozen wounded in air strikes by the Israeli Air Force on the Gaza Strip. The attacks were launched in response to the shelling of Israeli territory from Gaza.
A senior Palestinian militant Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, was killed in the first strikes by Israeli warplanes, along with another senior member of the PRC, Mahmoud Hannani. The PRC, which has strong ties with Hamas, is known to have carried out rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israelis say al-Qaisi was targeted because he was planning an attack.
In response to the attack that killed al-Qaisi Palestinian militants fired approximately 40 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday night. Israeli sources say at least eight people suffered injuries in the shelling, one of whom was seriously wounded.
The IAF then performed another series of airstrikes on various targets in the Gaza strip on Friday night in response to these latest attacks. The latest airstrike killed three Palestinians after an Apache-fired rocket hit a house and a car, Al Jazeera reports, citing medical sources.
Three of those killed in the air raids reportedly belonged to a military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades.
Some of the targets of Israeli war jets included empty military training camps in different parts of Gaza Strip.