GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza militants on Friday gunned down 18 alleged spies for Israel in an apparent attempt to plug security breaches and deter others, a day after Israel killed three top Hamas military commanders in an airstrike likely guided by collaborators.
In one incident, masked gunmen lined up seven men, their heads covered by bags, along a wall outside a Gaza City mosque and shot them to death in front of hundreds of people, witnesses said. A note pinned on the wall said they had leaked information about the location of tunnels, homes of fighters and rockets that were later struck by Israel.
In Israel, a 4-year-old boy was killed when a mortar shell hit two cars in the parking lot of Nahal Oz, a small farming community near Gaza. Five Israelis were hurt, one seriously, in several rocket strikes, the military said. One rocket damaged a synagogue.
The child’s death was bound to raise pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from an increasingly impatient public to put an end to rocket and mortar fire from Gaza — something Israel’s military has been unable to do after 46 days of fighting with Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office said he expressed his condolences and vowed that Hamas would pay a “heavy price.”
By early evening, Gaza militants had fired at least 117 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, while Israel carried out at least 35 airstrikes in Gaza, the military said. In a new warning from Israel’s military, automated phone messages told Gaza residents that “Hamas has decided to go to war again” and that people must “get away immediately from areas where Hamas conducts terror activities.”
