GAZA - Eight Palestinians were moderately injured in an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza city on Tuesday night, hours after an earlier air raid killed an Islamic Jihad militant in the area, medical sources said.

The fresh airstrike hit a four-by-four car in al-Jalla street in northern Gaza city and moderately injured eight Palestinians in the car, staff of Gaza's ambulance and emergency service said.

Witnesses said they heard a huge explosion caused by a missile, which hit the car in the back, and the identity of the eight victims was not immediately known.

An Israeli television reported that the airstrike targeted Gaza activists who helped to smuggle weapons from Egypt's Sinai to the Gaza Strip.

Earlier Tuesday, an Islamic Jihad militant was killed and four civilians injured in an Israeli airstrike on a motorcycle in northern Gaza Strip, medics and witnesses said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the health ministry of the de facto Hamas government in Gaza, told reporters that Abdallah al- Tilbani in his mid-twenties was killed and four others wounded by an Israeli air-to-ground missile.

The armed wing of the Islamic Jihad said in a message that Telbani is a member of the group and was killed in the Israeli airstrike.

The airstrike coincided with the third anniversary of Israel's three-week Cast Lead operation on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in late 2008, in which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and around 5,000 injured.

A fragile ceasefire was reached between Hamas and Israel after the conflict. However, the ceasefire has been violated several times, forcing its mediators, mainly Egypt, to intervene and reinforce it.