ISRAELI warplanes have killed a senior Hamas leader and several members of his family, in an airstrike that marks a possible new stage in the six-day offensive on the Islamists in the Gaza Strip.
Senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan inspects militants during a training exercise in the northern Gaza Strip in 2007.
With Hamas using increasingly sophisticated rockets to hit cities deeper inside Israel, F16 aircraft fired two missiles into the house of Nizar Rayyan, a fierce militant who had advocated renewing suicide bombings inside the Jewish state and the Islamists' takeover of the West Bank.
The blast decapitated Mr Rayyan and killed at least two of his four wives, as well as several of his children, and hurled his body into the street in Jabaliya, a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.