JNN 08 April 2011 : At least six Palestinians have been killed in two separate new Israeli attacks on the impoverished Gaza Strip, medical sources have announced.

An Israeli airstrike hit an area near the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Friday morning, killing two Palestinians, a Press TV correspondent reported.

In a separate incident, at least four more Palestinians were also killed in an Israeli tank shelling in Rafah. Dozens of others have also been injured.

The deaths bring the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks to 11 since Thursday.

On Thursday, Israeli forces attacked the Gaza Strip, killing at least five people and injuring dozens of others.

The Israeli army has confirmed that its planes and ground forces have targeted the Gaza Strip.

Israel has been regularly bombarding Gaza ever since its 22-day war on the impoverished enclave in December 2008 and January 2009, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians — many of them women and children.

The assaults come as Tel Aviv has imposed an all-out siege on the coastal enclave since June 2007.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted on Thursday that the Tel Aviv regime would not stop short of taking any military action against the Gaza Strip.

Israeli air strikes and shelling killed nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip Friday, with no end in sight to an Israeli operation against Hamas Islamists in retaliation for a rocket attack on an Israeli school bus.

Israel has said it will teach Hamas a lesson for using an anti-tank missile to attack the school bus just across the border Thursday. A teen-ager and a driver were injured in the attack, for which Hamas claimed responsibility.

At sundown, Israeli drones were still flying over the enclave and ambulances were racing through Gaza City to the main hospital. Reuters television footage showed a bloody scene near a cemetery with dismembered bodies and a severed head.

Israeli air strikes during the day killed three Hamas militants and three Palestinian civilians, on the second day of the upsurge in the conflict.

Hospital sources said a Hamas commander died of severe wounds, another man was killed by shelling and an 11-year-old was fatally hit.

At least 32 Palestinians have been killed since the latest spasm of violence erupted on March 20, with 14 killed in the past two days by Israeli action.

The Israeli armed forces said Friday they “identified two militant squads from Hamas” and hit the militants from the ground and air. A later strike near the coast killed a third militant and wounded another, Gaza medical sources said.

Hamas said a local commander was also badly injured, and it responded by firing six rockets at Israel from the south.

An elderly Palestinian and two women died earlier when their house in Khan Younis was hit and three other women were wounded, according to hospital sources.

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said “uninvolved civilians have apparently been injured” in one strike.

“The IDF regrets that the Hamas militant organization chooses to operate from within its civilian population, using it as a ‘human shield’,” the statement said.

NOT OVER YET

“We are in the middle of an event,” General Tal Russo, head of Israeli forces southern command, told reporters. “We are considering all actions, and we are in the midst of it.”

Hamas had been hit hard, he said, but it was not over yet.

The Israeli army has confirmed that its planes and ground forces have targeted the Gaza Strip.

Israel has been regularly bombarding Gaza ever since its 22-day war on the impoverished enclave in December 2008 and January 2009, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians — many of them women and children.

The assaults come as Tel Aviv has imposed an all-out siege on the coastal enclave since June 2007.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted on Thursday that the Tel Aviv regime would not stop short of taking any military action against the Gaza Strip.