Gaza toll at 118 in day five of Israeli strikes

Thirteen Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip early today, bringing the toll on the fifth day of violence to 118, medics said.

Two were killed in a strike that hit a charitable association for the disabled in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, while three others died in a second attack in western Gaza City, local health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

The deaths of eight more people announced in the early hours of today included one man who died of wounds sustained in an earlier strike.

The othere were five people killed in a strike in Jebaliya, in the northern Gaza Strip, and two further south in Deir el Balah, Qudra said.

Local officials said the morning's raids hit targets that included mosques and homes of Hamas officials, throughout the coastal enclave.

The latest fatalities raise the death toll to 118 since Israel began Operation Protective Edge early Tuesday in an attempt to halt cross-border rocket fire by militant groups.

Since then, militants have fired approximately 520 mortar rounds and rockets that struck Israel, while another 140 rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system, an Israeli army statement said late Friday.

It is the deadliest violence since November 2012, with a growing number of rockets fired at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and even as far north as Haifa.

So far, no Israelis have been killed.

An Israeli soldier was severely wounded in a mortar attack late Thursday, and another man was very seriously injured when a rocket hit a petrol station in the southern port city of Ashdod Friday.

Two soldiers were lightly wounded along the border with Gaza when Palestinians fired an anti-tank missile.