Israeli Airstrike Kills Senior Hamas Rocket Maker

Israeli warplanes fired missiles, killing a senior commander of the Hamas military wing and wounding 11 people in five targets hit across Gaza overnight, the group and the military said Saturday.

The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to a powerful rocket fired from Gaza that hit the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon on Friday, causing damage but no injuries.

Gaza's Islamic militant Hamas rulers said their slain member was Issa Batran, 42, a commander of the groups' military wing in central Gaza and a senior rocket maker.

Batran had survived several previous Israeli attempts to kill him, but his wife and five of his children were killed during Israel's three-week war in Gaza that ended in January 2009.

Later Saturday, some 3,000 Hamas loyalists marched in Batran's funeral procession, firing guns, waving the group's green banner and Palestinian flags. Batran was buried in a grave next to his wife and children.

The cross-border violence came after weeks of relative calm and raised concerns of further escalation.

A Hamas spokesman said the militant group would avenge Batran's killing.

The strikes hit a smuggling tunnel that runs under the Gaza-Egypt border used for smuggling weapons, the military said, as well as Batran's shack in central Gaza, which was likely used to make rockets, and a Hamas military training camp in Gaza City.

Israel's military says more than 400 rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza since Israel ended its punishing assault in the Hamas-run coastal area 19 months ago.

The Islamic militants have been building crude rockets for the past decade, and have fired hundreds of them at Israeli border towns.

However, Hamas has largely held its fire since Israel's military offensive against Gaza, and most of the 400 rockets were pelted by smaller militant groups. They were mostly crude, short-range rockets. However in Friday's attack, Ashkelon was hit by a military-grade Grad rocket that can travel longer distances and cause far more damage.

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