Israel air strike kills Hamas commander

The killing of Ahmad Jabari marked a dramatic resumption of Israel's policy of assassinating Palestinian militant leaders and the Israeli military said it was the beginning of a major offensive codenamed Pillar of Defence.

Palestinians called for harsh retaliation.

The air strikes came after a weekend exchange of Gaza rocket fire and Israeli air strikes appeared to have abated. The Israeli offensive is likely to reignite the conflict.

A string of air strikes around Gaza followed. The military said its aircraft targeted more than 20 facilities which served as storage or launching sites for rockets. Among the weapons destroyed were rockets that could hit as far as 25 miles (40km) into Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to meet his senior Security Cabinet later, officials said.

Hamas announced a state of emergency in Gaza. It evacuated all its security buildings and deployed its troops in Gaza away from their locations.

Mr Jabari was the most senior Hamas official to be killed since the last war in Gaza ended in early 2009. He has long topped Israel's most-wanted list, blamed for in a string of deadly attacks, including the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit in 2006.

In addition to Mr Jabari, eight other people were killed in the strikes. Of the nine, three were confirmed as militants, two were children and the identity of others had yet to be determined, said Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra. A further 30 people were injured.

On its Twitter feed, the Israeli military said it could be escalated further. "All options are on the table. If necessary, the (Israeli military) is ready to initiate a ground operation in Gaza," it said.

In a radio interview, the chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, said "at this stage" there are no plans for a ground offensive. "We're focusing on an air operation," he said.

Outside the hospital where Mr Jabari's body was taken, Hamas official Khalil al-Haya eulogised Mr Jabari and threatened Israel.

"The battle between us and the occupation is open and it will end only with the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem," an emotional Mr al-Haya said.

Thousands of angry Gazans chanted "Retaliation" and "We want you to hit Tel Aviv tonight".

Witnesses said Mr Jabari was travelling in a vehicle in Gaza City when the car exploded. Crowds of people and security personnel rushed to the scene of the strike, trying to put out the fire which engulfed the car and left it a charred shell.

The Israeli military released a black and white video of the air strike. The grainy film shows a sedan moving slowly along a road before exploding in a powerful blast which sent a large piece of the car flying into the air.

Hamas police cordoned off the area around a hospital where at least one body from the strike was taken. It was draped in a white sheet, with a burned leg poking out.

Plumes of black smoke wafted into Gaza City's skies following at least five air strikes. Ambulance sirens blared as people ran in panic in the streets and militants fired angrily into the air.

Fearing a long war in Gaza, Palestinians rushed to buy fuel, bread and other food supplies.

"We are working under fire to protect our people and to back the resistance," said Islam Shahwan, a Hamas interior ministry spokesman. "We have a full emergency plan that we are adopting now."

The Israeli military said the assassination was just the beginning.

"After a couple of days on ongoing rocket attacks toward Israeli civilians, the (Israeli military) chief of staff has authorised to open an operation against terror targets in the Gaza Strip," military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovitch said.

She said Mr Jabari had "a lot of blood on his hands" and that the military chief "authorised different targets" as well.

Advocates say targeted killings are an effective deterrent without the complications associated with a ground operation, chiefly civilian and Israeli troop casualties. Proponents argue they also prevent future attacks by removing their masterminds.

Critics say the killings invite retaliation by militants and encourage them to try to assassinate Israeli leaders. They complain that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings.

Dovish Israeli politician Dov Hanin condemned the killing.

"Assassinating leaders is never the solution. In place of the leaders killed, other will grow, and we will only get another cycle of fire and blood," he said.

During a wave of suicide bombings against Israel a decade ago, the country employed the tactic to eliminate the upper echelon of Hamas leadership.

During that period, Israeli aircraft assassinated the previous commander of Hamas's military wing, Salah Shehadeh, the movement's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, and dozens of other Hamas military commanders.

The practice set off a wave of criticism from rights groups and foreign governments, particularly the strike that killed Mr Shehadeh - a one-ton bomb which killed 14 other people, most of them children.

Israeli opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, a former chief of staff who has supported targeted killings, welcomed the strike.

"We need to continue this policy, to find them in every place," he told Israel's Army Radio. "Israel needs to determine the agenda, not Jabari."

Mr Mofaz warned that Israelis should expect an escalation of violence in the coming days following the assassination.

Mr Jabari was known in Israel as the man who accompanied Mr Schalit when the high-profile prisoner swap took place last October. Mr Schalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid from Gaza that killed two other soldiers, was swapped for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including more than 300 convicted killers.

Mr Jabari, nicknamed Abu Mohammed, was born in 1960 in the eastern Gaza neighbourhood of Shejaiya. In 2006, he became the acting commander of the military wing of Hamas after his predecessor, Muhammad Deif, was seriously wounded in an Israeli attack.

Mr Jabari began as a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, but switched his allegiance to Hamas after serving 13 years in an Israeli prison.

He survived four previous attempts by Israel to kill him. In one attempt in 2004 his eldest son, his brother and three other relatives were killed.

He was said to have led the bloody 2007 takeover of Gaza from Fatah forces, developing Hamas's military arsenal and its networks in Iran, Sudan and Lebanon and for his planning of the Schalit kidnapping. Hamas has ruled Gaza with an iron grip since then, and repeated attempts to reconcile with Fatah have failed.

The assassination threatened to further damage Israel's relations with Egypt, which is governed by Hamas's ideological counterpart, the Muslim Brotherhood.

On its official Facebook page, the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, called the assassination a "crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres against the besieged Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip".

It accused Israel of trying to "drag the region toward instability".

Israel and Egypt signed a peace accord in 1979. Relations, never warm, have deteriorated since long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising last year.