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GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Hamas' armed wing says it fired a long-range missile at Tel Aviv in retaliation for the killing of 11 civilians in Gaza City on Sunday.

The al-Qassam Brigades said fighters sent a Fajr missile to Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city, and shelled an Israeli war ship and military bases in response to what it called the massacre of the al-Dalou family.

An Israeli missile leveled the al-Dalou family home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, killing 11 people including four women and four children on Sunday afternoon.

An Israeli police spokesman said Israel's "Iron Dome" interceptor system shot down two incoming rockets from the Gaza Strip on Sunday night and no casualties or damage was reported.

It was the second strike on Israel's commercial capital on Sunday. In the earlier attack, one person was hurt by falling debris from a rocket that was intercepted south of the city.

Israel has killed 24 people on Sunday, including seven children, in the bloodiest day in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead concluded in January 2009.

Some 72 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday.

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Israeli Airstrike Kills Three Generations of a Palestinian Family

By JODI RUDOREN, FARES AKRAM and ISABEL KERSHNER for the New York Times

GAZA CITY — An Israeli bomb pummeled a home deep into the ground here Sunday afternoon, killing 11 people, including nine in three generations of a single family, in the deadliest single strike since the cross-border conflict between Israel and the militant faction Hamas escalated on Wednesday.

The airstrike, along with several others that killed civilians across this coastal territory and hit two media offices here — one of them used by Western TV networks — further indicated that Israel was striking a wider range of targets.

Gaza health officials reported that the number of people injured here had nearly doubled to 600 by day’s end; the Palestinian death toll climbed to 70, including 20 children. Three Israelis have been killed and at least 79 wounded by continued rocket fire into southern Israel and as far north as Tel Aviv, as Israeli cities were paralyzed by an onslaught of relentless rocket fire out of Gaza for the fifth straight day.

In the Israeli strike on Sunday morning, it took emergency workers and a Caterpillar digger more than an hour to reveal the extent of the devastation under the two-story home of Jamal Dalu, a shop owner. Mr. Dalu was at a neighbor’s when the blast wiped out nearly his entire family: His sister, wife, two daughters, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren ages 2 to 6 all perished under the rubble, along with two neighbors, an 18-year-old and his grandmother.

“We were asleep and then there was a terrific blast,” said Abdul-Latif Dahman, who lives nearby and was among more than 100 who stood vigil as the bodies were dug out. “There are no words to describe what happened later, only smoke and dust and heavy silence because the sound shut our ears.”

The smell of bomb residue and the roars of bulldozers filled the air as people clambered over shattered glass and bent iron bars to get a closer look. When two tiny bodies were finally found, rescuers and residents erupted in cries of “God is great!” One worker rushed the girl to an ambulance, while a neighbor grabbed the boy and just ran.

Read full report at New York Times News Source link

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