Palestinian killed in Gaza air strike: witnesses

GAZA (Reuters) – At least one Palestinian was killed and
two other people were wounded in an Israeli air strike in the
southern Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, hours after Israeli
missiles killed four militants, witnesses said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said an Israeli air strike
had targeted two armed gunmen who were close to the security
fence with Israel, north of the Sufah crossing.

“An Israeli force was operating close to the fence and they
(the gunmen) were nearing the fence,” she said.

Palestinian witnesses said the explosion rocked the
courtyard of a residential house in the village of Khuvaa, near
the southern town of Khan Younis.

The dead and wounded were members of the same family and
were not militants, one of the wounded said.

Residents in Khuvaa said Israeli troops had pushed deeper
into the village in a raid on Wednesday and had detained 10
people. It was unclear if they were militants.

An Israeli military source said a force was in the area as
part of ongoing operations there, adding that some people in
the village had been detained.

Earlier residents said an Israeli force had briefly
detained the head of the village municipality, Kamal Annajar,
during a raid. Annajar, who was also a local leader of the
militant group Hamas, was later released, they added.

Hours earlier in separate air strikes on two vehicles,
Israeli aircraft killed four Hamas members in the southern Gaza
town of Rafah, the Israeli military and witnesses said,
ratcheting up violence in the coastal strip. A further 20
people were wounded in the attacks.

Israel has pressed an offensive in the Gaza Strip for more
than two months to try to recover a soldier who was abducted in
a cross-border raid and to try to put a stop to rocket attacks
on the Jewish state.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed, about half of
them civilians.