At least 14 Palestinians, including two militant leaders, have been killed and a dozen wounded in air strikes by the Israeli Air Force(IAF) on the Gaza Strip in response to the previous day’s shelling of Israeli territory from Gaza.

Gaza Stripe / NationalTurk – Zuhair al-Qaisi, a senior Palestinian militant and the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was killed in the first strikes by Israeli aircrafts, along with another senior member of the PRC, Mahmoud Hannani. The PRC, which allegedly has close ties with Hamas, is known to have launched rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israelis state al-Qaisi was targeted because he was planning an attack on Israel territory.

In response to the attack that killed al-Qaisi Palestinian militants fired approximately 92 rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. Israeli sources report at least eight people suffered injuries in the shelling, one of whom was seriously wounded.

Israel Air force strike Gaza Strip in retaliation attempt

The IAF then performed another series of deathly airstrikes on various targets in the Gaza strip on Friday night in response to these latest attacks. The latest airstrike killed three Palestinians after an Apache-fired rocket hit a house and a car, Al Jazeera reports, citing medical sources.

Three of those slain in the Israeli air raids reportedly belonged to a military wing of the Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds Brigades.
Some of the targets of Israeli war planes included empty military training camps in different parts of Gaza Strip ın Israel/Palestine.