DHAKA: Senior Hamas leaders have threatened revenge against Israel after air raids in the Gaza Strip killed nine people, the single highest death toll since the 2012 cross-border war.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, on Monday accused Israel of a ‘grave escalation’ in violence and threatened to retaliate, saying Israel would ‘pay the price’.

Among the dead from overnight attacks were seven fighters from the Al Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, killed in a tunnel in Rafah, in the south of Gaza.

Moshir Almasry, a Hamas politician, said that Israel had ‘crossed all red lines’ and warned that the deaths would fuel resistance in the occupied territories, reports the Al Jazeera.

‘The blood of our people is very dear to us, ‘Almasry said in a post on Facebook. ‘Their blood was not shed in vain,’ he added, saying their deaths were ‘fuel of the intifada and the resistance’. 

In a statement, Israel’s army said it ‘has succeeded in stopping another attack against Israel by targeting terrorists who are implicated in launching rockets from central Gaza’. ‘The target was hit,’ said the statement.

Fighters in Gaza have fired at least 25 rockets and mortar shells over the border since Sunday morning, after a night of 10 air strikes.

Khaled al-Balawi, 28, whose younger brother Ibrahim was among the six Hamas fighters killed, said that he wanted to see the Israelis punished for the attack. 

‘The bombing stopped at 1:00 am, but nobody was able to sleep in Rafah,’ Khaled said in a telephone interview. ‘I call for an escalation to avenge for the blood of my brother and all the martyrs, I do not want ceasefire.’ 

Meanwhile Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lost a close political partner on Monday after Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he was dissolving his pact with Netanyahu’s Likud.

Lieberman, the foreign minister, has in recent days criticized Netanyahu’s response in the Gaza Strip to rockets fired into Israel, saying it does not go far enough.

Al Jazeera’s Nisreen el-Shamayleh, reporting from the occupied West Bank, said the Likud-Beiteniu partnership agreement was different from the coalition government agreement, which would not be affected.

BDST: 1806 HRS, JULY 7, 2014