GAZA CITY, Oct 22 (AFP) - Israel carried out another air strike on Gaza City overnight Thursday, witnesses said Friday.
Helicopter gunships fired three missiles at the house of a local chief of the so-called People's Resistance Committees.
The committees which group armed Palestinian militants earlier claimed responsibility for firing a Qassam rocket at the southern Israeli town of Sderot which caused no damage or casualties.
It was the first rocket to hit Israel since the army wrapped up Operation Days of Penitence, a massive Israeli campaign to stamp out Palestinian rocket attacks, on October 15, an army spokesman said.
The latest strike came after a military leader of the radical Palestinian group Hamas was killed in an earlier strike on the city late Thursday, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought to maximise his apparent majority in an upcoming vote on his plan to pull out of the territory.
Adnan el-Ghoul, 47, one of the leaders of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, was killed in the strike by an Israeli helicopter gunship on a car in northern Gaza City, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said.
Ghoul and his aide, Imad Abbas, 37, died when the helicopter fired two rockets, Palestinian medical sources said.
Two other people were wounded, one of them seriously.
10/21/2004 22:55 GMT - AFP