Jerusalem: Israeli warplanes pounded targets in the Gaza Strip Wednesday as a major campaign to stop volleys of Palestinian rocket fire entered its second day.
A strike on a home in Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, claimed the lives of a commander of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, his parents, a woman and two children, emergences services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Another strike early Wednesday on the southern city of Rafah killed a young man. The deaths brought to 28 the toll of dead since the launch of Israel's Operation Protective Edge early on Tuesday.
Air strikes took the lives of 24 and Israeli forces killed four Hamas militants who staged a beachfront assault Tuesday on an army base just north of the besieged Strip. Gaza militants fired missiles at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday in the most serious flare-up over Gaza since November 2012.
During the day Israel staged multiple air strikes on the Gaza Strip, which also left more than 100 wounded, militants from the Islamist movement Hamas hit back with rocket fire on Israel's major population centres in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
As sirens wailed across the Holy City, three loud explosions were heard and a series of flashes lit the sky to the southwest. Police said one rocket fell in the vicinity of Ramat Raziel, some 10 kilometres (six miles) from the city's southwestern flank and two more fell in outlying areas, without elaborating.
Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said there were no reports of injuries anywhere in the Jerusalem area.
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, said it had fired "four M75 rockets" at Jerusalem, which lies 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the Palestinian enclave. It also claimed to have launched a rocket at Haifa, 165 kilometres (100 miles) away.
There was no report of anything hitting the northern port city but the army said a rocket did fall in Hadera, 100 kilometres (62 miles) north of Gaza.
Hamas militants also said Tuesday they fired four rockets at Tel Aviv, 60 kilometres north of Gaza, setting sirens off across the city. Earlier, another rocket aimed at Israel's commercial capital was shot down by the Iron Dome anti-missile defence system.
Israeli authorities said that public bomb shelters in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had been readied for use.
