GAZA, Feb 5: Israeli forces killed three members of an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and wounded five others in an air strike which targeted a car in Gaza City early on Sunday, medics and witnesses said.

Hours later, a Palestinian stabbed to death a woman and wounded five other passengers on a minibus in Petah Tikva, a city near Tel Aviv.

The car was hit moments after an Israeli helicopter shot several missiles at a nearby club as militants met there, sending many fleeing into the streets before the deadly missile struck the vehicle near a Gaza security headquarters.

Goma Al-Saqa, a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, told Reuters the bodies were charred and dismembered.

An Israeli military official said: “A short time ago we staged an air attack against the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades after their continued rocket fire at Israeli towns.”

It was Israel’s first air attack on Palestinians since a Jan 25 parliamentary election in which Hamas scored an upset victory over Abbas’s Fatah party.

The Israeli attacks also came after a rocket fired from Gaza destroyed an Israeli home on Friday, wounding three people, including a baby. That attack was claimed by Islamic Jihad militants.

But the Al Aqsa group has claimed responsibility for the vast majority of rockets fired at Israel since it pulled its forces out of Gaza in September. The group said it fired four rockets at Israel on Saturday.

Makeshift rockets shot from Gaza seldom cause any damage or injury. Israel often retaliates for those attacks that do cause casualties.

Abu Al-Saed, a leader of a coalition of militants called the Popular Resistance Committees, vowed a “hard and painful” response to the Israeli strikes. The coalition has been involved in frequent rocket attacks alongside the Al-Aqsa group.

BUS ATTACK: “An Arab boarded a minibus...and took out a knife and began to stab passengers,” Menashe Aviv, a police commander, told Army Radio about the attack in Petah Tikva.

He said the assailant, from the West Bank, was disarmed by passers-by and taken to a local police station for interrogation.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which occurred on a shared-taxi minibus during the morning rush hour at the start of the Israeli work week.

Moshe Gershoni, driving his car to Tel Aviv, said he witnessed the attack while stopped at a red traffic light.—Reuters