Hamas vowed to extract a "heavy price" from Israel, and the Palestinian Authority threatened to call an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, after the IDF killed 12 Palestinians in a series of air strikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday. Eight of the dead were members of terrorist groups, but Palestinians said the other four were civilians, hit by a tank shell. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel was getting closer to launching a larger scale military operation. Late Thursday evening, the IDF targeted a Kassam rocket squad near Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said one person had been killed and several others wounded. Two Hamas operatives were killed in an IAF air strike in Beit Hanun Thursday morning.
On Wednesday night, five terrorists from the Army of Islam - a terror group involved in the abduction of Cpl. Gilad Schalit - were killed when an IAF missile struck their jeep in the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun. The IDF confirmed that it was behind the strike and said that the terrorists were on their way to launch Kassam rockets at Israel. The Army of Islam, a Hamas splinter group, was behind the March kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who has since been released. The group is also believed to be among those holding Schalit, who was abducted in a cross-border raid in June 2006.