2 critically hurt in Israeli air strike on Gaza

Two Palestinians were in critical condition and eight others wounded in an Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip on Sunday, medics said, revising an earlier account of one dead. The attack targeted a motorbike in the Brazil neighourhood of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources told AFP. A medical source at Rafah hospital later said two Palestinians belonging to Salafist movements were in critical condition following the attack that wounded eight others, including five children. Palestinian medical sources named the two Salafists as Talaat Halil Mohammed Dirbi, who lost both legs in the attack, and Abdullah Mohammed Hassan Maqawai. The Israeli military confirmed the strike in a statement, saying its aircraft targeted jihadists Talaat Halil Mohammed Jarbi and Maqawai. According to the army, Jarbi was long "involved in extensive terrorist activity, targeting Israeli civilian and security forces, including rocket firing, weapon manufacturing and other terrorist activities in the Gaza Strip." He was a "senior operative" involved in planning and carrying out an attack along the border security fence on June 18 in which an Israeli civilian was killed, it said. "He had also been planning a complex attack intended to take place along the Sinai border."