Israeli missile strike kills nine, medics say

GAZA - An Israeli missile strike on a vehicle carrying a Palestinian rocket-launching squad in Gaza last night killed at least nine people, including two children, witnesses and medics said.

It was one of the deadliest strikes from the air in years and came amid a surge of rocket fire from militants in Gaza following the killing of seven Palestinians, including three children, on a day of Israeli artillery shelling on Friday.

"There was an attack on a car that was heading to fire rockets at Israel," an army spokeswoman said in Tel Aviv.

Witnesses said they saw rockets in the wreckage of a yellow van hit in the strike east of Gaza City and that there were at least 10 casualties.

Medics said nine people were killed, two of them children.

Local residents said the men in the vehicle belonged to the Islamic Jihad group.

- REUTERS