Al-Dalu family killing

[3][better source needed] Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, a member of a Gazan police unit charged with protecting important people, was one of those killed in the airstrike.

[5] A Haaretz investigation stated that the target, Yahia Rabia, lived in a neighbouring house, and that the IDF had mistakening bombed the Al-Dalu household.

IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich initially said the strike had been an accident, and that they had been targeting a man who had directing the launching of 200-300 rocket from that neighborhood.

[1] After a period of declining commentary on the deaths,[4] on 27 November 2012, the Israeli army said that Mohammed Jamal al-Dalu, a 29 year-old[5] member of the Gaza civil police[1] who died in the attack was the target of the raid.

IDF spokeswoman Avital Leibovich stated that "The father was a known terror operative affiliated with the military wing of Hamas."

[7] Sherine Tadros, the Al Jazeera correspondent to the Middle East who covered the conflict from Gaza, criticized the IDF policy of targeting the family homes of alleged militants on the grounds of the high civilian death toll that it can produce: "Does anyone stop and ask: even if there was a Hamas official inside the house, is killing ten innocent civilians to take out one official who is obviously under Israeli surveillance justified?

"[12] During the engagement in Gaza, the IDF said that it fired warning shots over residential areas so as to allow civilians to flee their homes before Israel's air-strikes.