GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Five Gazans were killed in Israeli air strikes on Thursday as militants fired around 250 rockets over the border, killing three Israelis, officials on both sides said.
The latest violence raised to 13 the total number of Gazans killed in 20 hours of Israeli air strikes, which also left at least 120 people injured, medics said.
In the same period, Gaza rockets killed three Israelis and injured another five in a direct hit on a residential building in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi, police said.
Soon after dawn on Thursday, an Israeli air strike east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis killed three Palestinians, medical officials said.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said that the three men were all members and were hit as they travelled in a motorcycle-taxi.
Later in the day an air strike hit northern Gaza where two people were killed and another person was injured, medics said.
It was not immediately clear if they were civilians or militants.
Thursday’s rocket strike in Kiryat Malachi “killed … two males and a female in two apartments in a building which was hit,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying another five people were injured, four lightly and one moderately.
Since the violence erupted when Israel killed a top Hamas militant on Wednesday afternoon, the military has carried out “around 150 strikes” on Gaza, a spokeswoman said.
In the same period, “at least 195 rockets” hit Israel while another 48 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
The bloodshed began at around 1400 GMT on Wednesday when Israel killed Hamas military chief Ahmed Jaabari and his bodyguard, sparking a fierce bout of cross border fighting which continued into the night.
Six more people died during various strikes later on Wednesday, including two children, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry said as Gaza hospitals went on high alert.
Israel’s harshest assault on the Palestinian territory in four years, which comes as the Jewish state heads towards general elections, prompted an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council amid growing international concern.
The rocket attack on Kiryat Malachi was claimed by Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades in a statement on its website.
Israeli police said they had raised the level of alert across the entire country in order to deal with “the possibility of terror attacks” in response to Israel’s killing of the Hamas chief.
“All the major cities in southern Israel were hit, and the majority of the more serious damage was in Beersheva,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
 Schools within a 40 kilometre (24 miles) of Gaza were closed, and those living within seven kilometres (four miles) of the strip had been told not to go to work, he said. “It’s a pretty serious situation.”
An AFP correspondent close to the Gaza border saw several Israeli jets flying south as well as convoys of military jeeps and at least two flatbed trucks carrying armoured bulldozers.
Throughout the morning, air strikes hit northern Gaza, Gaza City and east of Khan Yunis, medics and security sources told AFP.
Among the dead were five Hamas militants, two children, a woman and an elderly man, he said. The identities of the others were not immediately clear.
The violence sparked a furious response from Egypt’s Islamist administration, which has close ties with Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement, with Cairo recalling its ambassador in protest at the Israeli operation.
Israel has said the strikes were only “the beginning” of an offensive targeting Gaza militants and warned it may expand its activity, with the army saying if necessary it was “ready to initiate a ground operation.”
“If it becomes necessary, we are prepared to expand the operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Wednesday evening, several hours after the start of Operation Pillar of Defence.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the operation was to strengthen Israel’s deterrence, damage militant groups’ rocket-firing capabilities and stamp out attacks on Israel.
Jaabari’s death sparked fury in Gaza, with Hamas’s armed wing warning saying that by killing its leader Israel had “opened the gates of hell on itself.”
And Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said the strike was tantamount to a “declaration of war.”
In New York, the UN Security Council held an emergency 90-minute session to discuss the crisis, with Arab states pushing for a strong condemnation, but the US envoy strongly defending Israel’s right to self-defence in the face of Palestinian rocket fire.
Amid fears of a regioal flareup over the confrontation, US President Barack Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon both phoned Netanyahu and Morsi in a bid to de-escalate the conflict.
Britain urged restraint and Russia said it was “very concerned.”
The air strikes capped five days of rising tension in and around Gaza, which saw Israel kill seven Palestinians and militants fire more than 120 rockets over the border, injuring eight.
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