GAZA CITY, June 13: Eleven people, including two children, were killed in the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday in this year’s deadliest air strike by the Israeli military in the territory.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas swiftly condemned the strike as “state terrorism” and called on the international community to intervene.

The casualties occurred when two rockets hit a car carrying three members of the Islamic Jihad militant group and travelling on the main thoroughfare dissecting the coastal strip just north of Gaza city, Khaled al-Batch, a top official of the group, told AFP.

Two of the militants, Hammudeh al-Wadyeh, 25, and Shawqi al-Saiqali, also in his 20s, were killed as a result, al-Batch said. The third man was injured.

Seven civilians, including two children, were killed and 20 injured when a third rocket struck as onlookers gathered on the scene, witnesses and medical sources said. The civilians included two brothers, 4-year-old Hisham and 8-year-old Shaher al-Mugrabi, and their father Ashraf, said Jumaa al-Saqaa, a doctor at a hospital said.—AFP