Gaza City - The death toll in the latest violence in the Gaza Strip continued to climb Thursday, as three militants were killed in Israeli airstrikes and one died of wounds sustained a day earlier, hospital officials in the territory said. The Palestinian death toll since Wednesday now stands at 13 with more than wounded, after Israeli forces fired a missile at a car carrying militants in southern Gaza City, fired several artillery shells at militants in northern Gaza and sent ground forces into the Beit Hanoun area in northern Gaza.
A nighttime strike Thursday, which killed one, was aimed at militants in Beit Hanoun who had just launched rockets into Israel, the military said, adding that more than 40 rockets were fired since Wednesday afternoon.
Several militant groups have claimed responsibility for launching rockets and mortar shells toward southern Israel and at border crossings between the Jewish state and Gaza.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in New York for the UN General Assembly, called for international intervention "to stop the massacre committed by the occupation army," local media reported.
Many Palestinian factions including Abbas' own Fatah party and the rival Hamas movement condemned the Israeli actions.
Earlier, a senior Fatah member warned that an upcoming international meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could fail if Israel launched a large-scale offensive in the Strip to combat the near-daily rocket fire by Palestian militants at nearby Israeli towns and villages.
The latest Israeli operations in Gaza began Wednesday afternoon, when a ground force backed by armour crossed into the northern strip in a bid to crack down on militants launching makeshift rockets.
The Israel military said in a statement that the force was "operating in an area from which Palestinians have launched a large number of rockets and mortars."
Mo'awyea Hassanein, Palestinian Health Ministry emergency services chief, said in a statement that that one Palestinian who was critically wounded Wednesday night in northern Gaza died had Thursday morning.
Hassanein said that the other two fatalities Thursday were killed in a predawn Israeli airstrike, which wounded four other people. Hospital officials had previously reported that there were no fatalities from the strike. Hamas said that the two were members of its armed wing.
Islamic Jihad announced that one of its militants had died after being wounded while exchanging fire with Israeli soldiers.
On Wednesday evening, an Israeli artillery shell landed near a house in Beit Hanoun, killing five people including two members of the radical Popular Resistance Committees, and wounding five. An Israeli military spokeswoman said that troops had fired at militants about to launch an anti-tank missile.
Shortly before the artillery shelling, an Israeli aircraft struck a car carrying four militants, members of a shadowy group known as the Army of Islam, killing four. The Israeli military spokeswoman said the vehicle was loaded with Qassam makeshift rockets for use against Israeli targets.
The Army of Islam was the group behind the March kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was released in July.
Members of the group made their first public appearance Thursday when they joined thousands of mourners at the funerals of the 12 killed.
Mourners fired in the air, despite a ban on doing so by the Hamas movement, which administers the Gaza Strip, and shouted slogans denouncing recent meetings between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert.
