Israel kills 4 Gazans as border violence spirals
At least four Gazans, among them children, were killed on Tuesday by Israeli fire as tensions between militants and Israel soared after days of rocket attacks and air raids.
The house in Gaza City where the four victims were killed by the Israeli strike Photo: AP
Another 12 people, including young children, were injured in the attack, when an Israeli shell slammed into a home in Shejaiya on the eastern outskirts of Gaza City, an emergency services spokesman said.
Adham Abu Selmiya initially said five people had died when Israel "opened fire on young people who were playing football in Shejaiya" but he later lowered the toll to four dead.
The dead, three of them cousins, were named as Mohammed al-Helu, 11, Yasser Ahad al-Helu, 16, Yasser Hamad al-Helu, 50, and Mohammed Harara, 20.
Of the injured, four were in serious condition while the other eight were in moderate condition, Abu Selmiya said.
Pictures taken by an AFP correspondent in Gaza City's Shifa hospital showed three small children, a teenager and an adult covered in blood.
Hamas fires a barrage of mortars at Israel
Israel launches five air strikes on Gaza Strip
The army confirmed it had fired mortar shells towards the eastern outskirts of Gaza City shortly after four Qassam rockets hit Israel, and expressed "regret" over reports that civilians had been hurt.
"In response to rocket fire from the northern Gaza Strip ... the IDF (army) fired mortars at the launch site. Apparently, as a result of this fire, innocent civilians were hit," a spokeswoman said.
"The IDF regrets the harm to innocent civilians, but emphasises that Hamas chooses to operate from the heart of a civilian area and uses civilians as human shields," she said, noting that the military had opened an investigation into the incident.
It was the third military strike on Shejaiya on Tuesday, following an earlier air strike, which seriously wounded one militant, and a burst of tank fire, which left two civilians injured shortly after dawn.
The killings follow days of rising cross-border violence, which has ramped up tensions between Israel and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers and once again raised fears of a large-scale Israeli military invasion to stamp out rocket fire.
In the late morning, a man was seriously wounded in Shejaiya when an Israeli drone fired a missile towards militants who were trying to fire an anti-tank missile at nearby troops, sources on both sides said.
Witnesses said the man was among a group of militants who were trying to fire projectiles towards southern Israel shortly before the strike.
The Israeli military confirmed the strike had targeted "a group of terrorists preparing to launch an anti-tank missile" at troops operating nearby, and confirmed that one person had been hit.
"The IDF warns Hamas not to continue its aggression," a statement said, noting that troops would respond "with determination" to any further firing from Gaza.
Earlier, witnesses in the same neighbourhood said two civilians were injured when an Israeli tank opened fire shortly after a Qassam rocket was fired into Israel, causing neither injury nor damage.
Overnight, Israel staged multiple air raids in Gaza, and wounding 17 people, most of them lightly, two days after Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, fired more than 50 mortar rounds at the Jewish state, slightly injuring two people.
At two of the raids hit targets very close to the Shejaiya neighbourhood.
Medics said two women and seven children were among those hurt in the raids, which Israel said had hit "terror tunnels," weapons factories and various other sites.
Several hours before the Israeli attack, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades had offered to stop firing rockets if Israel would end its attacks on Gaza.
It said Saturday's barrage of 50 or so projectiles had been in response to an Israeli strike the previous Wednesday that killed two of its members.
That strike was launched in broad daylight immediately after a mortar round fell harmlessly in southern Israel, in what some commentators criticised as a disproportionate response.
Saturday's mortar attacks represented the most intensive bombardment since Israel's 22-day war on Gaza, which ended on January 18, 2009 and killed 1,400 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, and 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers.
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