Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip yesterday killed five Palestinian militants, including the head of a radical group, while mortar and rocket fire from Gaza pounded the Jewish state.

One strike, on a car travelling in the Tel El-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees, Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow-member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.

Both the PRC and the military wing of Hamas threatened retribution for Qaisi's death. A second air raid, on the east side of the city, killed Obeid al-Gharabli, Mohammed Harara, and Hazem Qoureqa of the Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, that organisation said in a statement.

A third strike, on Zeitoun, east of the city, caused no casualties, Palestinian security sources said.

The strikes came in response to Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on southern Israel, in which no casualties were reported.

The military said that during the course of the day a total of 16 rockets and mortar rounds from Gaza slammed into southern Israel.

Both the PRC and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel yesterday.

The Israeli military said Qaisi “was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed” a deadly attack into southern Israel from Egypt last August.

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