Israeli warplanes struck Gaza, killing the wife and child of Hamas’s top military chief, the Islamist movement said Wednesday after truce talks in Cairo collapsed in a storm of violence.
It was not immediately clear whether Mohammed Deif himself, who has topped Israel’s most wanted list for decades, was killed or wounded in the strike which hit a house in Gaza City late on Tuesday.
Hamas vowed bloody revenge, saying Israel had “opened the gates of hell”.
The deadly attack came just hours after a resumption of the fighting in and around Gaza after more than a week of calm as Egyptian negotiators pushed the warring sides to broker a decisive end to six weeks of bloodshed.
The strike killed two and injured another 45, medics said, with Hamas confirming early Wednesday that those who died were the wife and child of Deif, who heads its armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra initially said three people were killed in the strike, among them an unidentified man, but later revised the toll down to two. He did not explain why.
He named the victims as Widad Deif and her 7-month-old son, Ali.
Hamas called on people to attend their funeral which would take place at noon (0900 GMT) at a mosque in the northern town of Jabaliya.
Millions in Gaza and southern Israel spent another sleepless night as terror returned to the skies, with air strikes and rocket fire ending an extended lull brought on by back-to-back truce agreements.
Since the violence resumed on Tuesday afternoon, shattering more than a week of calm, at least 12 people have been killed in scores of Israeli strikes across Gaza, Qudra said.
A second deadly strike early on Wednesday killed seven people in the central town of Deir al-Balah, among them a heavily-pregnant woman and three children, he added.
In the same period, Gaza militants fired at least 80 rockets over the border, of which between 40 and 45 had hit southern and central Israel while another 24 were shot down, an army spokeswoman told AFP.
The army had hit 78 targets across Gaza, she added.
The violence erupted as Egyptian mediators pushed both sides to agree on a lasting end to the conflict ahead of a midnight (2100 GMT) deadline.
So far, the bloodshed in Gaza which erupted on July 8 has claimed the lives of 2,029 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side. The UN says around three quarters of the victims in Gaza were civilians.
