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Hundreds of angry mourners on Sunday buried a pregnant Palestinian mother and her 4-year-old daughter who were killed in pre-dawn Israeli airstrikes on a Hamas training facility in southern of Gaza city.
Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, told reporters that 30-year-old Noor Hassan and her daughter Rafaf Hassan were killed and three other family members were inured in the heavy and intensive attacks.
No casualties have been reported among the militants in the training post.
The family said the house was destroyed in last summer's war on the Gaza Strip, and was rebuilt, but collapsed in the heavy airstrikes on the Hamas training facility.
The death of the woman and her daughter raised the number of the Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip since Friday to 11 while more than 100 were injured.
Nine Palestinian young men were killed in the fierce clashes that broke out with Israeli soldiers on the borders of eastern Gaza Strip with Israel.
The Israeli airstrikes on the Hamas facility came in response to earlier rocket attacks into Israel, according to an emailed statement by the Israeli army spokesman.
The statement warned that the army won't allow more rockets to be fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, adding that "Hamas is fully responsible for it."
No one claimed responsibility for the three rockets fired overnight from the Gaza Strip into Israel, of which two landed into Israeli open areas causing no injuries or damages.
Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesperson, said the Israeli "aggression on a family house south of Gaza signals Israel's intention to escalate the situation on the ground."
Abu Zuhri warned Israel, in a press statement, of continuing these "follies."
Relative calm prevailed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Sunday following 10 days of clashes in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians.
Hamas leaders in Gaza insisted that the wave of clashes in the Palestinian territories would lead to a third Intifada.
However, Talal Oukal, a Gaza-based political analyst, told Xinhua that he cannot call what happened as a new Intifada, adding that "it is just an action that aims at pushing forward the stalled peace process."
Meanwhile, Ahmed Majdalani, member of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told Xinhua on Sunday that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry conveyed a message from Israel to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel is not interested in more escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories.
"President Abbas informed Kerry that it was not the Palestinian side who began the escalation, and that it was the Israeli government which started the tension and it is fully responsible for what happened," said Majdalani.
Kerry told Abbas that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carried out practical measures to clam down the situation "mainly banning Israeli members of Knesset from reaching the compound of al-Aqsa Mosque in the old city of Jerusalem," according to Majdalani.
According to the Palestinian health ministry reports, 21 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,000 injured in a wave of clashes that broke out in the last 10 days between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. Enditem
