Eight Palestinians wounded on Thursday as an Israeli army aircraft struck a Palestinian motorcyclist in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, medics and witnesses said.

The witnesses said that one air-to-ground missile hit a man on a motorcycle in a busy street in the town, seriously wounding him near Nasser Hospital.

Medics at the hospital in the town said that seven other people, who were bystander children returning back from school, were also injured.

Meanwhile, Gaza militants claimed responsibility early on Thursday for launching two homemade rockets from the Gaza Strip at southern Israeli towns in the vicinity of the enclave.

Israel has declared a unilateral ceasefire on January 18, ending 22 days of military assault on the Gaza Strip that left around 1,400 people killed and 5,500 wounded. The Israeli declaration was followed by a unilateral Gaza militants' declaration of a one-week ceasefire.

The two rockets were the first to be fired at Israel since the end of the Israeli assault on Gaza, in addition to several mortar shells fired by Islamic groups of Hamas and Jihad at Israeli ground forces in southeast Gaza Strip.

(Xinhua News Agency January 29, 2009)