GAZA CITY (AFP) — Three Palestinian militants, including the local head of an armed group, were killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp of Gaza City late Sunday, medics and security sources said.
They said an air-to-ground missile struck their car in Shati camp, killing Nidal al-Amudi, a head of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is loosely linked to the Fatah group of moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Maher al-Mabhuh, belonging to another group, was also killed along with a third militant who died of his injuries.
An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the raid, without specifying what type of aircraft was used, and said it targeted militants involved in rocket or other attacks on Israel.
Earlier on Sunday, eight mortar shells crashed onto Netiv Haassara village on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, without causing casualties, the spokesman told AFP.
The latest deaths raised to 6,049 the number of people killed since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinian, according to an AFP tally.
Israeli forces did not launch any military operations in Gaza, which is controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, during the visit of US President George W. Bush, who toured Israel and the West Bank last Wednesday to Friday.
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