Five Palestinians were killed and four wounded in an Israeli air raid on a training base of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza City drawing threats of revenge from the militants.
An army spokeswoman confirmed that an Israeli aircraft had fired missiles at the training base in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood of the city in the first military strike since the new governing coalition took office Thursday.
Among the victims was Jumaa Doughmoush, brother of Committees member Momtaz Doughmoush, who was behind a failed car bombing at the Karni crossing between Israel and Gaza, medics said.
The rest of the dead were also members of the Doughmoush family but Momtaz himself escaped, Committees spokesman Abu Sherif told AFP.
The Israeli army vowed to continue targeting commanders of the Committees, a small militant group largely composed of defectors from other factions that has been behind a spate of rocket attacks on southern Israel in recent months.
‘We will continue tracking down those responsible for rocket firing and terror activity against Israel,’ a senior officer told AFP.
‘We had told the Palestinians that calm on our side will lead to calm on theirs but that hasn't been the case.’
The Committees vowed to avenge the deaths.
‘We will respond to this crime by firing 100 homemade rockets against Israel,’ the group said in a statement. ‘We will then prepare a suicide attack in Israel.’
The green light for the attack was given by Defence Minister Amir Peretz in the Labour leader's first operational decision since assuming office, public radio reported.
It drew swift condemnation from both moderate Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas and the Hamas-led government.
Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina hit out at what he described as the ‘ongoing Israeli policy of assassinations’ and urged the main diplomatic players ‘to immediately intervene to put a stop to the Israeli escalation.’
Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad also condemned the Israeli ‘assassination operation.’
‘It is the first act by the new government. The attack is proof that this government intends to escalate its crimes against the Palestinian people and hamper the Palestinian government,’ he said.
The latest deaths brought to 5,042 the overall toll since the September 2000 start of the Palestinian uprising, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
Earlier on Friday, Israeli troops shot dead one Palestinian during an arrest operation in the West Bank city of Nablus. The army said the man was about to throw a firebomb at the force.