AFP/Gaza

Palestinians survey the scene after Israeli tank fire struck a home in Gaza City yesterday
At least four Gazans, among them children, were killed yesterday by Israeli fire as tensions between militants and Israel soared after days of rocket attacks and air raids.
Another 12 people, including young children, were wounded when an Israeli shell slammed into a home in Shejaiya on the eastern outskirts of Gaza City, an emergency services spokesman said.
Adham Abu Selmiya said the deaths occurred when Israel “opened fire on young people who were playing football in Shejaiya.”
The dead, three of whom were cousins, were named as Mohamed al-Helu, 11; Yasser Ahad al-Helu, 16; Yasser Hamad al-Helu, 50 and Mohamed Harara, 20. Four of the injured were in serious condition while the other eight were in moderate condition, Abu Selmiya said.
Pictures taken by an AFP correspondent in Gaza City’s Shifa hospital showed three small children, a teenager and an adult covered in blood.
The killings follow days of rising cross-border violence, which has ramped up tensions between Israel and Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers and once again raised fears of a large-scale Israeli military invasion to stamp out rocket fire.
The bloodshed drew an angry response from the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, which vowed revenge.
“This crime will not go unpunished and the resistance is not afraid of the so-called Zionist deterrence,” a Hamas website quoted brigades spokesman Abu Obeid as saying.
The Israeli army confirmed it had fired mortar shells at the eastern outskirts of Gaza City shortly after four Qassam rockets hit Israel, with a spokeswoman insisting it “does not seek an escalation in the south.”
The military also expressed “regret” over reports that civilians had been hurt. “In response to rocket fire ... the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) fired mortars at the launch site. Apparently, as a result of this fire, innocent civilians were hit,” she said.
“The IDF  regrets the harm to innocent civilians, but emphasises that Hamas is the one who chooses to operate from the heart of a civilian area and uses civilians as human shields.”
The army insisted there were “terrorist among the dead,” but nevertheless said the military had opened an investigation into the incident.
Spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich declined to say why the army fired relatively inaccurate mortar shells into a civilian populated area, saying only that “the IDF uses a variety of means.”
It was the third military strike on Shejaiya yesterday, following an air strike, which seriously wounded one militant, and a burst of tank fire, which left two civilians moderately injured shortly after dawn.
In the late morning, a man was seriously wounded in Shejaiya when an Israeli drone fired a missile at militants who were trying to fire an anti-tank missile at nearby troops, witnesses and the army said.
The military acknowledged targeting “a group of terrorists preparing to launch an anti-tank missile” at troops operating nearby.
“The IDF warns Hamas not to continue its aggression,” a statement said.
Earlier, witnesses in the same neighbourhood said two civilians were injured when an Israeli tank opened fire shortly after a Qassam rocket was fired into Israel, causing neither injury nor damage. Both were moderately hurt, medics said.
Overnight, Israel staged multiple air raids on Gaza, wounding 17 people, most of them lightly, two days after the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades fired some 50 mortar rounds at the Jewish state, slightly injuring two people.
Two of the raids hit targets very close to the Shejaiya neighbourhood.
Medics said two women and seven children were among those hurt in the raids, which Israel said had hit “terror tunnels,” weapons factories and various other sites.
Several hours before the Israeli attack, Ezzedine al-Qassam had offered to stop firing rockets if Israel would end its attacks on Gaza.
It said Saturday’s barrage of 50 or so projectiles had been in response to an Israeli strike the previous Wednesday that killed two of its members.
That strike was launched in broad daylight immediately after a mortar round fell harmlessly in southern Israel, in what some commentators criticised as a disproportionate response.
Saturday’s mortar attacks represented the most intensive bombardment since Israel’s 22-day war on Gaza, which ended on January 18, 2009 and killed 1,400 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, and 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers.