Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a fourth day Monday, killing four more Palestinians, as a teenager died in a mystery blast, raising the death toll so far to 23. The latest strike killed a man in his 60s and his daughter in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, a medical spokesman said.
Several hours earlier, a teenager was killed nearby, just outside Beit Lahiya in what the Palestinians claimed was a drone strike. But the Israeli military said they had not mounted any strikes in the area since the early hours of the morning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue targeting militants for “as long as necessary” and several hours later, Israeli warplanes carried out at least eight strikes across the territory, targeting a weapons storage facility and five rocket-launching sites across Gaza.
The first deaths were two militants who were killed in strikes around the southern city of Khan Yunis, both of them from the Islamic Jihad group, which identified them as Raafat Abu Eid and Hamada Suleiman Abu Mutlaq, both 24.
Shortly afterwards, a blast killed 15-year-old Nayef Qarmut and wounded six other teenagers, two critically, near Beit Lahiya. “A drone strike hit a group of students who were walking by empty land on their way to school,” emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told AFP.
But the Israeli military denied activity in the area at the time, and an AFP correspondent at the scene confirmed there was no sign of an air strike.
“From an initial check, there were no air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip since the early hours of the morning,” a military spokesman told AFP.
The latest attack, which hit the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp, killed Mohammed Mustafa al-Hasumi, 65, and his daughter Faiza, 35, medics said.
The latest deaths brought to 23 the Palestinian toll from a weekend of tit-for-tat violence that began with Israel’s killing of a senior militant on Friday afternoon.
Before the latest strike, Abu Selmiya said 73 people had been wounded in 36 Israeli air strikes across the tiny coastal territory.
A spokeswoman for the army said 31 rockets and mortar rounds had hit Israel since midnight (2200 GMT Sunday), while another seven were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system.
Quartet meets as clashes intensify
Top officials of the diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East conflict — the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations — held talks Monday amid heightened Israeli-Palestinian clashes. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met at the UN headquarters. EU foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton joined by video-conference. The talks came as Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip for a fourth day, killing four more Palestinians and raising the toll to 23 dead. Israel says it is hitting back at scores of rocket attacks from Gaza. The Quartet has been trying to find a negotiated way to set up a Palestinian state. But its efforts have become deadlocked as there have been no direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks since September 2010.
