Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip

The strikes killed four more Palestinians, as a teenager died in a mystery blast, raising the death toll so far to 23. The latest strike killed a man in his 60s and his daughter in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, a medical spokesman said. Several hours earlier, a teenager was killed nearby, just outside Beit Lahiya in what the Palestinians claimed was a drone strike. But the Israeli military said they had not mounted any strikes in the area since the early hours of the morning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue targeting Palestinians for "as long as necessary" and several hours later, Israeli warplanes carried out at least eight strikes across the territory, targeting a weapons storage facility and five rocket-launching sites across Gaza. The first deaths were two militants who were killed in strikes around the southern city of Khan Yunis, both of them from the Islamic Jihad group, which identified them as Raafat Abu Eid and Hamada Suleiman Abu Mutlaq, both 24. Shortly afterwards, a blast killed 15-year-old Nayef Qarmut and wounded six other teenagers, two critically, near Beit Lahiya. "A drone strike hit a group of students who were walking by empty land on their way to school," emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya told AFP. But the Israeli military denied activity in the area at the time, and an AFP correspondent at the scene confirmed there was no sign of an air strike. "From an initial check, there were no air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip since the early hours of the morning," a military spokesman told AFP. The latest attack, which hit the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp, killed Mohammed Mustafa al-Hasumi, 65, and his daughter Faiza, 35, medics said. The latest deaths brought to 23 the Palestinian toll from a weekend of tit-for-tat violence that began with Israel s killing of a senior militant on Friday afternoon. Before the latest strike, Abu Selmiya said 73 people had been wounded in 36 Israeli air strikes across the tiny coastal territory.