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Fresh Israeli airstrikes on Gaza Strip kill three

Other News Materials 28 December 2008 01:48 (UTC +04:00)

Three more Palestinian militants were killed on Saturday night in two separate airstrikes on eastern Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, said local medics and Hamas security sources, according to Xinhua.

Mo'aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian Health Ministry said that three Palestinians were killed and four wounded on Saturday night by Israeli air-to- ground missiles.

He added that the three were the latest death toll in the Gaza Strip following dozens of unprecedented intensive Israeli airstrikes on Hamas police installations on Saturday that have killed a total of some 210 people and injured some 750 others.

A Hamas security spokesman also said that Israeli warplanes launched missiles at a group of Palestinian fighters east of Gaza City, killing two of them, while another airstrike on Beit Lahia town in northern Gaza Strip killed one.

The spokesman said in a statement sent to reporters that Israeli warplanes also launched two other airstrikes on southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, which preceded Saturday night's two airstrikes.

One of the two airstrikes targeted a metal workshop, which Israel said it is used in manufacturing makeshift rockets, and the other airstrike targeted Asda'a Media and Communication center that belongs to Hamas.

Israel began a military operation called "the poured lead" on the Gaza Strip in response to homemade rockets attacks carried out by Hamas and other factions' militants on southern Israeli towns and cities in the vicinity of the enclave.

The operation began by carrying out intensive airstrikes on Hamas police installations all over the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding hundreds of Palestinians. Most of them were Hamas police officers.

Israel said that the intensive airstrike was the first stage of a large-scale military operation against the Hamas movement that has been ruling the Gaza Strip after it routed President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces last year.

Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Fawzi Barhoum, said in a statement that the Islamic movement "will not surrender," adding the Palestinian people and Hamas "would keep their resistance against the Zionist enemy."

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