Israeli aircraft pounded dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday after vowing to extract a heavy price from the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which it accuses of killing three kidnapped Israeli teenagers on the West Bank.
The Israeli air force carried out a “precision strike” against 34 targets in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the army said. The airstrikes came after more than 20 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza since late Sunday, it said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The airstrikes came after the discovery late Monday of the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who disappeared while making their way home from their religious school in the tense West Bank on June 12. Speaking at the start of a meeting of his security cabinet following the grisly discovery, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay.” He said the three “were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts.”
Israel’s security cabinet is set to meet again Tuesday evening to decide what Israel’s response will be now to the kidnapping and killing of the teens, whose bodies were discovered 18 days after they first disappeared. The three teens will be buried together in a mass funeral Tuesday afternoon. Members of the government are expected to attend.
Since the abductions, the Israeli military has conducted one of the largest and most aggressive sweeps in the disputed West Bank in a decade. The fallout has included house searches, raids, arrests and even deaths, igniting new frictions between Israelis and Palestinians. One Palestinian, who Israel described as a Hamas militant, was killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank overnight.
Early Tuesday, the Israeli military exploded the entranceways into the homes of two suspects it says carried out the kidnappings and killings. Both are Hamas operatives, Israel says. Hamas, which runs the crowded Gaza Strip, is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union.
Netanyahu has said that Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, is directly responsible for the kidnappings and killings, and he has criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent move to form a transitional Palestinian unity government backed by Hamas.
Both Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party say they are not responsible for the teens’ fate, although the Fatah leader was quick to condemn the kidnapping. In Washington, President Obama urged Israelis and Palestinians to “refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”
While few details were released on the exact fate of the three teens, security officials said the bodies of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, were found in an open area close to Hebron, in the West Bank, near where they disappeared. Fraenkel was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said the bodies were discovered about 5 p.m. Monday by civilian volunteer searchers and special forces near the village of Halhul just north of Hebron.
“They were under a pile of rocks, in an open field,” Lerner said. He said the army could not yet specify how the victims were killed or how long their bodies had been hidden there.
Lerner also said it was too early to determine what Israel’s response would be, but by Monday night some officials were calling for decisive action.
“There can be no forgiveness for the killers of children and those who sent them,” Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement. “Now is the time to act.”
On Thursday, Israel released the names of two suspects it said carried out the kidnappings. Israel said that both men are known Hamas operatives and that both have been missing since the three Israeli youths disappeared.
On Sunday, Palestinians reported that the wife of one suspect, Marwan Kawasma, had been questioned by the Israeli military and that the father of the second suspect, Amer Abu Aysha, had been arrested.
Israel’s Channel 2 News reported that the bodies were found on land belonging to Kawasma’s family.
Lerner, the Israeli army spokesman, said that some of the people arrested since the teens disappeared were involved in the kidnapping and killing of the youths, but the main suspects were still at large.
“We will continue our manhunt to find the two fugitives and bring them to justice,” he said.
In Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority government, a senior official of the West Bank’s governing Fatah party called the kidnapping “an Israeli story from the beginning.”