One dead, four wounded as Israeli planes target Gaza

GAZA - Israeli warplanes fired rockets at several targets around midnight Thursday on the Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and wounding four, witnesses and hospital sources said Friday.

Two smuggling tunnels were destroyed by missiles from Israeli jets that struck near the Gaza Strip border with Egypt, witnesses said. Medics in Rafah in southern Gaza said that the casualties occurred in the tunnel strikes.

Israeli F-16s planes patrolling over the Gaza Strip fired a single missile into a building south of Gaza City used by militants, the witnesses said. Missiles also struck three open areas: two spots in the central Gaza Strip and one target in south-eastern Gaza.

Medical crews said no casualties were reported in the four other airstrikes, which came hours after Gaza militants lobbed 17 mortar shells and fired two homemade rockets at southern Israel.

An Israeli army spokesman confirmed the four airstrikes against what he described as a building used for manufacturing mortar shells and three launch sites used by militants to fire rockets at Israel.

Earlier Thursday, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a pro-Hamas militant group, said in a leaflet that its fighters had launched 17 mortar shells at the Kerem Shalom crossing in south-eastern Gaza.

Israeli Radio reported that Gaza militants fired mortar shells and homemade rockets at the crossing on the Israeli border and launched rockets at the coastal Israeli city of Ashkelon. No damage or casualties were reported in Israel.

Violence has increased lately between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, where two PRC fighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday in south-eastern Gaza.