The wife and child of a Hamas military chief were killed when an Israeli air strike struck their home in Gaza, the militant group said Wednesday.
The bombing is believed to have struck the Gaza City home of Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military chief who has escaped numerous assassination attempts, the Associated Press reported. Gaza Health Ministry official Ashraf al-Kidra said three people were killed in the air strike.
A Hamas leader in Cairo, Moussa Abu Marzouk, said the victims included Deif's wife and two-year-old daughter. It is not known if Deif was inside the home during the attack. Confirmation of the deaths was not immediately available.
A local media outlet quoted an anonymous official saying the strike was intended for Deif, the AP reported. Israeli security officials speculate Deif's home would not have been randomly targeted.
"If there was intelligence information that Mohammed Deif was not at home then the house would not have been blown up," Yaakov Peri, a former director of Israel's internal security service, told Army Radio.
"With the assumption that Israel was behind this, it shows its intelligence capabilities...and it is an important indication that no head of the Hamas military wing is immune to a targeted killing."
Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip with air strikes Wednesday in response to rockets from Gaza militants that came pouring in the day before. The rockets were fired just hours before an extended ceasefire was to end on Tuesday.
The continuation of hostilities promoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pull his negotiators from Cairo, where truce talks have been underway to end the five-week Gaza war.
Sixteen Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed, al-Kidra told the AP. The latest casualties bring the Palestinian death toll to over 2,000, most of them civilians. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and 3 civilians since the conflict began July 8.
Israel has not yet said anything about the alleged strike on Deif's home. Assassination attempts have been made on Deif's life at least four times since the '90s, according to Reuters.
