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GAZA CITY: Israeli aircraft killed six Palestinian activists including five members of the Al-Qassam Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, in two raids on the Gaza Strip early Thursday, the Islamist movement said.
A pilotless drone carried out a first attack near Jabaliyah in the north of the Strip killing three militants and wounding one person who later died in hospital, Hamas officials and a medical source said.
The same sources said a second drone carried out a raid near Tuffah north of Gaza City, killing two more and wounding four people, three of them seriously.
Hamas said ground forces also moved into the Tuffah sector.
Questioned by AFP an Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said "an army operation is underway."
The latest deaths bring to 6,128 the number of people killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence since 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
Israeli aircraft had pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday following renewed rocket fire against southern Israel, wounding at least three people, a Palestinian medical source said.
Gaza militants launched at least seven rockets at Israel on Wednesday, an army spokeswoman said.
On Tuesday Israel pounded Hamas positions in its Gaza Strip bastion, killing nine Palestinian militants as the Islamist movement said it was behind Monday's suicide bombing that killed a 73-year-old woman in the desert city of Dimona.
It was the first time since August 2004 that Hamas, which seized control of the territory sandwiched between Israel and Egypt last June, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack.
Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon, a close Olmert ally, said that Israel had to maintain its punishing economic sanctions against Gaza "as there is a war currently going on against Hamas." - AFP/ac
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