Israeli air strikes killed at least 10 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Palestinian medical sources and armed groups said. Meanwhile, Palestinian rockets killed an Israeli man.
According to Reuters, Hamas said five of its members died in an air strike that targeted a van travelling near the southern Gazan town of Khan Younis. Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli Apache fired two missiles at the bus directly hitting it, and added that other Apaches fired at another vehicle in the vicinity of the first one but no casualties were reported. The interior ministry in the PA caretaker government denounced the new Israeli attacks, saying that anyone hinging hopes on peace with the "Zionists" was dreaming.
Ehab Al-Ghussain, the ministry's spokesman, urged PA chief Mahmoud Abbas to end his "absurd negotiations" with Israel and to return to the embrace of his people and its resistance project. He described any proposed calm with the "Zionist enemy" in the light of such incessant aggression and massacre as "frivolous."
The Islamic Jihad group said one of its gunmen was killed in an early morning air strike east of the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
In the afternoon, a Palestinian rocket launched from the Gaza Strip killed one person in Israel, Israeli emergency service sources said. Hamas claimed responsibility.
Two more Palestinians were killed in an afternoon air raid on a Gaza City neighbourhood from which rockets had just been fired, witnesses said. Another air strike just after nightfall near a gas station north of Gaza City killed another two Palestinians and wounded 12 others, including four children between the ages of six and 10, medics said.
In the West Bank, undercover Israeli troops killed a Palestinian activist during an arrest raid in the city of Nablus on Wednesday, security and medical sources said. Occupation soldiers, dressed in civilian clothing, entered Nablus in a private vehicle and opened fire at four members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. According to AFP, they then nabbed two of the Palestinianswho had been wounded by the gunfire.
Shortly afterwards, the army handed the Palestinians the body of Ibrahim al-Museini, 25, who had died of wounds sustained during the raid, medical sources said.
