7 killed in Israeli Helicopter Raid On Gaza

The recent escalation came one day after Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at a car carrying Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Al-Rantissi in Gaza, leaving him wounded and two others dead.

The Wednesday strike, which also left two women dead and some 20 people wounded, came about an hour after a bomb attack ripped through a bus in the central west of occupied Jerusalem, killing 16 people and wounding more than one hundred others.

"Two missiles hit the car. I stopped my car to help them but the Israeli helicopters fired four more missiles at us," Mohammad, a Palestinian in his forties who was wounded in the attack, told AFP at a nearby hospital.

"When they took the bodies out of the car, I cannot tell you how they looked. It was terrifying," added Abu Raed Hmeid, who was one of the first to rush to the scene.

Minutes after the missile attack, hundreds of Hamas supporters and other Palestinians mobbed the fuming wreckage and started chanting anti-Israeli slogans, vowing to give their lives for the Palestinian cause.

Hamas later claimed responsibility for the Jerusalem blast in a statement on its website.