Airstrikes hit Hamas military chief's family

Israeli airstrikes killed 18 Palestinians in Gaza, including the wife and infant son of Hamas's military leader, Mohammed Deif, in what the group said on Wednesday was an attempt to assassinate him after a cease-fire collapsed.

Several thousand mourners on Wednesday joined the funeral procession for the wife and baby son, angrily demanding revenge against Israel.

Firing Kalashnikovs into the air, they carried the bodies of 27-year-old Widad and her seven-month-old son Ali, who were among at least four people killed in a deadly air strike on Gaza City late on Tuesday.

Accusing Israel of opening a "gateway to hell", Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The attacks caused no casualties but demonstrated the Islamist movement could still bring the Gaza war to Israel's heartland despite heavy Israeli bombardments in the 5-week-old conflict.

Israel's military said it had carried out 60 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since hostilities resumed on Tuesday, and that Palestinians launched more than 80 rocket salvos, some intercepted by the Israeli anti-missile Iron Dome system.

The violence shattered a 10-day period of calm, the longest break from fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its territory.

Hamas said an Israeli bombing of a house in Gaza City on late Tuesday was an attempt to assassinate Deif, widely believed to be masterminding the Islamist group's military campaign from underground bunkers.

Israel has targeted Deif in airstrikes at least four times since the mid-1990s, holding him responsible for the deaths of dozens of its citizens in suicide bombings.

"I am convinced that if there was intelligence that Mohammed Deif was not inside the home, then we would not have bombed it," Yaakov Perry, Israel's science minister and former security chief, told Army Radio. A Hamas official said that Deif does not use the house.

Three bodies were pulled from the rubble. Hospital officials identified them as Deif's wife, his 7-month-old son and a 20-year-old man.

An Israeli Cabinet minister on Wednesday justified the airstrike on Gaza that killed the wife and child of Deif, saying that he was a legitimate target.

"Mohamed Deif deserves to die just like (Osama) bin Laden. He is an arch-murderer, and as long as we have an opportunity, we will try to kill him," Interior Minister Gideon Saar said.

He said he could not confirm whether the head of Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, had been killed during the airstrike late Tuesday in Gaza City.

Egypt on Wednesday called on Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations, expressing its "profound regret at the breach of the cease-fire in Gaza".

Reuters - AFP

(China Daily 08/21/2014 page11)