Three of Haniyah's nephews killed in Israeli strike

Three nephews of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah were killed when Israeli air forces bombed his sister's house in the Sheihk Radwan district of Gaza.

Israeli air forces conducted 20 strikes against Hamas targets on Saturday, while al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, fired five missiles into Israel as a retaliatory assault.

The death toll from Israeli air strikes on Gaza has risen to 127, with the strike that killed nine people including Haniyah's nephews, according to Palestinan health sources.The Israeli army said Saturday that it has hit 1,160 targets in the Gaza Strip since Monday, July 7, while the Palestinians fired a total of 689 rockets at Israeli cities.

"Overnight, the IDF hit over 60 terror targets, making a total of 1,160 since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge," the Israeli army wrote on its Twitter account.

The army said that the Palestinian group Hamas fired over 689 rockets at Israeli cities in four days."That's about one rocket every 10 minutes," it added. Security sources confirmed a slightly lower figure, saying that they fired more than 600 rockets since Monday.

Ismail Haniyah is one of the top leaders of Hamas and a former Prime Minister of the Palestinain National Authority, who still claims to have some authority.

Israel has launched a military offensive - dubbed "Operation Protective Edge" - with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from Gaza.

It has continued to pound the territory with airstrikes, while ground troops remain massed on the Gaza Strip's borders in advance of a possible ground assault.

Gaza-based resistance factions, meanwhile, have continued to fire rockets into Israel in response to the unrelenting airstrikes.