GAZA, November 16 (RIA Novosti) - The number of people killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza has risen to 19 as three teenagers were killed early on Friday, a spokesman of Gaza's health ministry Ashraf al-Qidra told Radio Alaqsa.

“Three Palestinian children aged ten, 14 and 16 died in an Israeli Air Force strike on a car in Beit Hanoun,” he said.

Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense on Wednesday, killing Hamas' military chief Ahmed al-Jabari and attacking hundreds of rocket-launching sites, ammunition depots and radical Islamist groups operating in Gaza, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian militants launched about 306 rockets against cities in southern and central Israel on Thursday, in what they say is a response to Israeli strikes at targets within Gaza.

News of the first Israeli casualties was reported on Thursday: three people were killed when a rocket launched from Gaza struck their house in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi.

The Israeli military earlier said two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip reached Tel Aviv. One of them exploded in the suburb of Rishon Lezion and the other one - off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea. It is the first time Tel Aviv has been threatened by missile attacks since the 1991 Gulf War, when missiles fired by Saddam Hussein's regime hit the city.