Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed 14 Palestinians, including a militant group chief, medics said Saturday, in the deadliest 24 hours in the border area in more than three years. Two men riding a motorcycle in the town of Khan Yunis were killed in a raid on Saturday, medics said. They had earlier reported one man as clinically dead but said he died later in hospital. The Israeli military confirmed its aircraft attacked a target in the Gaza Strip but had no immediate details. The raids came as Palestinian militants fired at least 90 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel since Friday morning, according to an army spokeswoman.
The Palestinian barrage injured four people, one of them seriously, Israeli military sources said. Israeli media said that three of the casualties, including the badly wounded man, were agricultural labourers from Thailand working on a farm near the border with Gaza. Local residents interviewed on radio and television said they had been told to stay close to bomb shelters and that large public gatherings had been banned, leading to the cancellation of several football matches on Saturday. An army statement said earlier that the air force had attacked a range of targets in Gaza since Friday. One of the retaliatory air strikes killed the head of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the ultra-hardline militant group said. The PRC threatened reprisals for Qaisi’s death. Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, said the air strikes also killed 10 of its members. Thousands of mourners, many chanting calls for revenge and firing automatic weapons into the air, buried the 12 Palestinians killed earlier at funerals across the strip on Saturday.