Israeli raid kills five Palestinians
Five Palestinians, including two members of Islamic Jihad and an eight-year-old child, have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a vehicle in Gaza City.
Seven bystanders, most of them children, were wounded in the attack.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed that the military carried out the attack on a wanted member of the Islamic Jihad.
Witnesses and Palestinian security sources said the two activists, whose names were not immediately known, were travelling in the car when it exploded into a ball of flames on Monday.
Witnesses said the eight-year-old boy was killed while standing close to the car.
Two others, boys aged 14 and 15, also died, a hospital official said.
Sources said at least one rocket was fired from an Israeli occupation army aircraft into the car as it drove down Salah al-Din Street in the Gaza City centre.
‘Massacre’
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Seven others, mostly children, |
An Israeli military source said one of the activists killed was involved in rocket attacks against Israel.
Hamas, which is forming a government after winning Palestinian parliamentary elections in January, called the air strike a “massacre”.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said that “if the international community remains quiet the situation will explode.”
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said it was a dangerous escalation against the Palestinian people.
Monday’s deaths bring to 4975 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising (intifada) in 2000.
More than three-quarters of the victims have been Palestinian.
Ehud Olmert, the acting Israeli prime minister, on Thursday lifted restrictions on the Israeli army in its operations against the Palestinian resistance movements.