GAZA CITY: Four armed Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. ‘There was an aerial attack against a (rocket) launching squad in the northen Gaza Strip a few minutes ago,’ an Israeli military spokesman said. ‘The force identified hitting them.’ Doctors at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City said they had received four bodies.

Palestinians said the operatives were from the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees. A spokesman for the group calling himself Abu Attaya said the four were firing mortar shells into Israel when they were killed.