PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: A new Israeli strike on Gaza killed two Palestinians, authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory said, bringing the tally of people killed by Israeli attacks on Tuesday to fifteen.
The health ministry in Gaza said that an air attack on a car in Khan Yunis killed 2 men.
Earlier, officials said Israeli air strikes in the city before dawn killed thirteen Palestinians, including several children.
The ministry said that four children were killed and twenty people were wounded, with some in critical condition, in the strikes, which left buildings ablaze and turned others to rubble.
Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh said that assassinating the leadership in a treacherous operation would not bring security to the occupier but greater resistance.
The Israeli military warned residents within forty kilometers of the Gaza border to stay near bomb shelters until Wednesday evening.
Russia’s diplomatic mission to the Palestinians said one of the dead was a Russian national, a doctor who was killed alongside his wife and one of his children.
The United Nations (UN) Middle East peace envoy, Tor Wennesland, said that he was “deeply alarmed” by the latest violence and described the killing of civilians as “unacceptable”.
Jordan’s foreign ministry spokesman, Sinan Majali, said Amman was taking steps to “immediately stop this dangerous escalation”.
Israel told a UN meeting in Geneva it was justified in carrying out what it labelled Operation Shield and Arrow, which it said followed “months of attacks against Israeli citizens”.
Israel and Palestinians have fought multiple wars since Hamas took control of the enclave in 2007.
49 Palestinians die
A 3-day conflict in Gaza last August left 49 Palestinians and no Israelis dead, with Cairo playing an important role in securing a ceasefire.
Following Tuesday’s air strikes, Egypt’s foreign ministry stated its “total rejection of such attacks” which “inflame the situation in a way that could get out of control in the occupied Palestinian territories.”
The Gaza deaths bring to 121 the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so far this year.
Nineteen Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian, have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP count based on official sources from the two sides.
