Death toll from weekend Israel-Gaza fighting rises to 47

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP – The death toll from last weekend’s fighting between Israel and Gaza militants has risen to 47, after a man died from wounds sustained during the violence, the Health Ministry in Gaza said Thursday.

Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group fired more than a thousand rockets over three days of fighting, the worst cross-border violence since an 11-day war with Hamas last year.

According to the Health Ministry, 47 people were killed, among them 16 children and four women. Israeli strikes appear to have killed some 30 people, among them several militants and two senior Islamic Jihad commanders, one of whom Israel said it targeted in order to foil an imminent attack. As many as 16 people might have been killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian militants.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the man whose death was announced Thursday was wounded.

A cease-fire took hold Sunday night, bringing an end to the fighting, in which no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded.

Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers have fought four wars and several smaller battles over the last 15 years at a staggering cost to the territory’s 2 million Palestinian residents.