Israeli aircraft kill Gaza militant

Bloomberg News

JERUSALEM -- Israeli aircraft killed a Palestinian militant and a teenager in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday as rockets from the Hamas-controlled territory hit Israel in the third day of violence.

About 60 rockets and mortar shells have struck southern Israel since the fighting started Monday with an attack on the Israel-Egypt border. Nine Palestinians and one Israeli have died.

The Israeli army said one of the Palestinians killed yesterday was an Islamic militant who was behind the border attack. An accomplice was severely wounded, the army said. The second death was a 14-year-old boy whose father was severely wounded in an Israeli strike, said Gaza emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmeya.

The bloodshed comes as the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi claimed victory in Egypt's presidential election, the first since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year.

"There is a link between the heightened tensions between Gaza and Israel and what looks to be the drift of Egypt to Islamist rule," said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. "This would be a strategic change and we can expect a much more tense southern border than we have seen for many years."

Israeli leaders, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have voiced concerns about worsening security on the border with Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state more than three decades ago.

They also cite links between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, an Islamic movement that controls Gaza and is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the European Union and the U.S.

The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, sent text messages to reporters in Gaza claiming responsibility for the first time since April 2011 for the rocket and mortar attacks. "We won't keep quiet in response to Israeli assaults," the group said.