The death toll from last weekend’s fighting between Israel and Gaza militants has risen to 48 after an 11-year-old girl and a man died from wounds sustained during the violence, the Health Ministry in Gaza said.
Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group fired more than a thousand rockets over three days of fighting, the worst cross-border violence since an 11-day war with Hamas last year.
According to the Health Ministry, 16 women and four children were among those killed, as were two senior Islamic Jihad commanders, one of whom Israel said it targeted in order to foil an imminent attack.
As many as 16 people might have been killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian militants.
It was not immediately clear how the man who died on Thursday was hurt.
Meanwhile, two wounded Gaza children, ages eight and 14, were fighting for their lives in a Jerusalem hospital.
The fighting disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Israel’s sophisticated Iron Dome missile defence system knocked down many of the rockets headed to Israel and no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded.
A cease-fire took hold on Sunday night, bringing an end to the fighting.
Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers have fought four wars and several smaller battles over the last 15 years at a staggering cost to the territory’s two million Palestinian residents.
