Airstrike leaves 12-year-old boy dead

A vehicle was blown apart in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City today, critically wounding the bodyguard of an Islamic Jihad leader and killing a 12-year-old boy, witnesses and doctors said.

Ten people were wounded, three of them critically, in the blast, which ripped apart the front end of a white Peugeot on a busy Gaza street.

Some witnesses reported seeing a missile fired from an aircraft and heard Israeli warplanes in the sky around the time of the explosion. An army spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Israel’s military has routinely targeted Palestinian militants in airstrikes throughout more than three years of fighting.

The blast critically wounded Aziz Mahmoud al-Shami, a top bodyguard and a cousin of Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami, according to officials at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital. The Islamic Jihad leader was not in the car.

Tarek Sousi, a 12-year-old boy on his way to school, was killed in the blast, doctors said.

Crowds of onlookers gathered around the wreckage of the car, which caught fire after the strike.

In the last Israeli airstrike, on December 30, a helicopter fired two missiles at a car carrying Hamas militants, wounding 11 people.