Three Palestinians were killed Thursday during an Israeli air raid on Gaza, and three Israelis were killed by a rocket, in the early hours of the second day of a large Israeli military operation called "Pillar of Defense" against armed Palestinian groups.
The three men killed Thursday morning by Israeli warplanes in Khan Yunis (southern area) belonged to the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.
In total, so far 11 Palestinians were killed, including two children and one woman, and 115 have been wounded since the beginning of the operation, which was launched Wednesday with the assassination of Hamas's military operations chief, Ahmad Jaabari.
The funeral of Ahmed Jaabari held in the morning in the presence of hundreds of people, including dozens of armed Hamas men.
In Israel , three people were killed in the early morning by a rocket fired on the town of Kiryat Malachi, some 30 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, police said. "Three people were killed and two others wounded slightly by a Grad rocket attack against a residential building in Kiryat Malachi," Micky Rosenfeld, Israeli police spokesman confirmed.
Police reported salvos of rockets fired from Gaza on the southern of Israel, including the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gan Yavne, Kiryat Gat and Be'er Sheva, the capital of the Negev, some 40 km from Palestinian Territory.
Israel has suffered some 130 rockets since Wednesday afternoon, police said, 27 of which were intercepted. Hamas said it launced to rockets towards Tel Aviv (75 km from Gaza), but Israel denied these claims.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had targeted late Wednesday night and early Thursday "hundreds of medium and long range rockets and its production infrastructure," damaging "significantly the ability of Hamas to launch rockets and its ammunition depots."
In another military statement, the Israeli army said "the Air Force Thursday morning scattered leaflets calling the civilian population of the Gaza Strip to stay away for their own safety from
