Israeli airstrikes killed five Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip.
Pressing its offensive against Palestinian cross-border rocket fire, Israel dispatched military aircraft Thursday to bomb two cars transporting terrorists in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
The first strike killed a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees faction along with his wife, who was also in the vehicle. The second strike killed two members of Islamic Jihad and a woman bystander.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions continued shelling the Israeli border town of Sderot, but caused no serious casualties.
Speaking at an economic convention in Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed no let-up in the hunt for Gazan rocketeers.
“We have no desire to harm the residents of the Gaza Strip, but we will not accept this reality,” he said. “We will continue to fight Islamic Jihad and Hamas, and those allied with them, without compromise and without pity.”
