GAZA - Israeli aircraft struck Hamas security installations in Gaza on Friday, killing at least one Palestinian, in further retaliation for attacks along the Egyptian border in which eight Israelis died.Gaza residents said three compounds controlled by the Hamas Islamist group that rules the enclave were hit in the overnight raids. Medical officials said a 13-year-old boy in a nearby building was killed and 17 people were wounded. There was no immediate word on casualties among militants.
The series of assaults by gunmen on a desert road north of Israel's Red Sea resort of Eilat on Thursday drew Israeli accusations that Egypt's new rulers were losing their grip on the porous frontier. Israel said the attackers infiltrated from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip via Egypt's Sinai desert, despite stepped up efforts by Egyptian security forces in recent days to rein in Palestinian and Islamist radicals.
"If anyone thinks the State of Israel will resign itself to this, they are wrong," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief television address about the most deadly attack in Israel since 2008.
Israeli military commanders said six civilians and two soldiers were killed in attacks on two buses, a car and an army vehicle. Another 25 people were wounded.
The military said seven gunmen were killed in southern Israel, including two who blew themselves up in suicide attacks on one of the buses and in a confrontation with soldiers.
Egyptian soldiers apparently shot dead two gunmen, the military said.
Hours later, Israel struck in the Gaza Strip against the Popular Resistance Committees, an armed faction that often operates independently of Hamas. The Israeli military said the PRC was behind the border attacks.
The PRC said its commander, Kamal al-Nairab, his deputy, Immad Hammad, and three other members were killed in Thursday's air strike on a home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The faction vowed "double" revenge against Israel for the attack, which local Palestinians said also killed a nine-year-old son of the owner of the house.
"The people who gave the order to murder our people and hid in Gaza are no longer among the living," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on television. "I set a principle: when someone harms the citizens of Israel, we react immediately and with force."