2 Girls Killed, Bring Total Death Toll to 360 Palestinians
Adjust font size:
Israeli areal offensive into Gaza Strip entered its fourth day Tuesday, bringing the death toll among the Palestinians to 360, Palestinian medical sources said.
Lama and Haya Talal Hamdan, two sisters aged between 4 and 11, were the latest fatalities reported to the hospital, said Mu'awia Hassanein, a Palestinian health emergency official.
Witnesses said an Israeli drone plane fired a missile at a donkey cart the girls were riding in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya, killing them immediately.
Seven others were also killed since the beginning of Tuesday in the ongoing Israeli airstrikes across Gaza Strip, according to the hospital sources.
The seven died when the F16 fighter jets hit a house belongs to Maher Zaqout, a Hamas commander, in Beit Lahiya.
Zaqout's house was empty of inhabitants but the fatalities were neighbors and bystanders, according to security sources.
Meanwhile, the Israeli missiles landed on al-Qarara police station in southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, killing a guard of a nearby UN-run school, says Mu'awia Hassanein.
The Gazans are still hearing sounds of tens of blasts that shake their houses due to the intensive strikes.
The latest raids targeted a mosque, a training camps by Hamas and tens of Hamas-run security compounds that were shelled at the beginning of the offensive Saturday.
The Israeli warplanes carried out at least ten raids into a complex harboring office of most of Hamas government's ministries in the heart of Gaza city.
(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2008)