Six-month-old baby survives deadly Israeli airstrike

Since Monday night, Hamas militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and in retaliation Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes.

Gaza: A six-month-old baby was the only survivor of an Israeli air raid in Gaza City that killed at least 10 members of the family - mostly children - early on Saturday.

It was the deadliest single strike since the battle with Gaza's Hamas rulers erupted earlier this week.

The baby's father, Mohammed Hadidi, said his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with relatives. She and three of the children, aged 6 to 14, were killed, while an 11-year-old is missing. Only his six-month-old son Omar is known to have survived.

Hadidi said his wife, whom he identified as Um Suhaib, and sons Suhaib, 14, Abdul-Rahman, 8, and Wissam, 6, were killed instantly.

Read:Israel stages new round of heavy airstrikes on Gaza City

The baby was taken to al-Shifaa Hospital in Gaza where he is undergoing treatment for a broken leg and wounds he suffered in the strike.

Following the attack, hundreds of mourners marched through the streets of Gaza City, carrying the bodies of family members who were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel and in retaliation Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes. In Gaza, at least 126 people have been killed, including 31 children and 20 women; in Israel, seven people have been killed, including a 6-year-old boy and a soldier.

Rocket fire from Gaza and Israel's bombardment of the blockaded Palestinian territory continued into early Saturday, when an airstrike on a three-story house in a refugee camp in Gaza City killed eight children and two women from an extended family.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read:Israel destroys Gaza tower housing international media offices

Shortly after the strike that killed the 10 women and children, Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.

The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a hill in the Old City revered by both Muslims and Jews.

Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters.

The militant group fired some 2,000 rockets into Israel, according to the Israeli military.

Most have been intercepted by anti-missile defenses, but they have brought life to a standstill in southern Israeli cities, caused disruptions at airports and have set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

With input from agencies