As Israel increased air strikes on day 45 of the bloody conflict, at least 15 Palestinians, including three senior Hamas commanders and four children, were killed in Gaza on Thursday, Agence France-Presse reported.
When Israeli missiles completely destroyed a four-storey home in the southern city of Rafah before dawn, the leaders in the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades were among at least seven people killed, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. The Brigades, the military wing of Hamas which holds de facto power in Gaza, identified the three as Mohammed Abu Shamala, Raed al-Atar and Mohammed Barhum.
The deadly raid came 36 hours after the wife and infant son of the Brigades' top military leader, Mohammed Deif, were killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City late Tuesday. Shortly afterwards, another person was killed in a raid on Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Another seven Palestinians, four of them children, were killed after two strikes targeted groups of people in the street in the northern town of Beit Lahiya and in Gaza City during the morning, Qudra said, adding that a man and a 13-year-old boy were killed by the strike in Beit Lahiya while five people, including three children died in Gaza City, he said, without giving their ages.
As well as the 15 killed in air strikes, another person in Nusseirat camp died of injuries sustained earlier in the conflict, Qudra said.
The latest deaths bring the number of Palestinians to 2,065 who have been killed during six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The UN has claimed that around three-quarters of the victims in Gaza are civilians while sixty-seven people have died on the Israeli side, according to AFP.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama said he was increasingly worried by the conflict. "We have serious concerns about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives, and that is why it now has to be our focus and the focus of the international community to bring about a ceasefire," he told reporters at the White House.
