http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13165159/
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 22 minutes ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A bomb dropped by an Israeli warplane destroyed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building early Thursday, witnesses said.
The bomb collapsed the building and caused widespread destruction in the area. The foreign ministry is controlled by Hamas. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Meanwhile, Israel killed at least 23 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, including nine members of one family in an airstrike that destroyed a house where the army said senior Hamas commanders were meeting.
Wednesday’s death toll, given by Palestinian witnesses and security sources, was the highest in a single day since Israel launched an offensive on June 28 in the Gaza Strip to force militants to free an abducted soldier and halt rocket attacks on the Jewish state.It was also the highest number of Palestinian deaths in one day since September 2004.
A series of deadly Israel air raids coincided with an armored sweep into the central Gaza.
The army said the strike on the three-story house near Gaza City wounded Mohammad Deif, overall leader of the governing Hamas movement’s armed wing and Israel’s most wanted man.
A spokesman for Hamas’s Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades denied Deif was hurt. The group took part in the capture of Corporal Galid Shalit on June 25, prompting Israel to launch its first ground operations in Gaza since quitting the territory last year.
Hamas militants, however, took over the intensive care unit of Gaza City's main hospital, where doctors said seven militants were in critical condition. The gunmen refused to say who was being treated. The air strike killed a local Hamas leader, Nabil Abu Selmeya, his wife and seven sons and daughters aged 7 to 19, medics said. His eldest son, who was not at home, survived.
A later Israeli air strike using two missiles killed at least five other Palestinians in central Gaza.
Palestinian medics said Israel’s air raids and tank shelling had killed a total of 23 people on Wednesday, including militants and one policeman.
Bloody incursions
The Gaza offensive has killed nearly 80 Palestinians and one soldier, piling pressure on the Hamas government, already reeling from a Western aid embargo.
Israel has rejected calls from Hamas for negotiations on a prisoner swap for Shalit.
Israel’s army said Deif and other armed wing commanders were meeting in the Gaza building. They were targeted because intelligence showed they were planning attacks, it said.
“The fact that the meeting between Deif and the others took place in a residential building is an indication they intended to use the inhabitants as a human shield to protect themselves,” a military spokesman said.
One senior Hamas commander, who was not in a life-threatening condition, was among the 35 wounded.
Deif, in his 40s and who is rarely seen in public, has escaped several Israeli assassination attempts. Those close calls have turned him into a folk hero to many Palestinians.
“Israel will pay for daring to hunt the lion of Qassam,” said one Hamas activist who gave his name as Ahmed, speaking near the wrecked building, a tangle of twisted metal, broken concrete and blood.
The scene at the bombed Gaza building recalled Israel’s assassination of Hamas military commander Salah Shehada in 2002 by dropping a one-ton bomb on his home. The death of 14 other people in that attack drew a wave of international criticism.
Deif later replaced Shehada.
The Israeli army sent dozens of armored vehicles into central Gaza before dawn, effectively cutting the territory in two.
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