A senior commander in Islamic Jihad's "military wing" killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Hanoun, Gaza sources say.

A senior terrorist in the Islamic Jihad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, Gaza medics told AFP.

According to Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra the airstrike in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza killed six people, including two women and two children.

The killed terrorist was a “senior commander” in the Al-Quds Brigades, the “military wing” of the Islamic Jihad.

The airstrike came as Israel’s Operation Protective Edge entered its second day. The first day saw more than 120 rockets being fired from Gaza towards Israel, most of which exploded in open regions and the rest of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome system.

The latest salvo of rockets on Tuesday evening hit Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and as far as Hadera, which is located 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of Tel Aviv and south of Haifa.

Hadera is the furthest point to date that a Gaza rocket has reached.

Some of the civilian casualties in Tuesday’s airstrikes were a result of terrorists using civilians as human shields, a fact which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu emphasized in a statement on Tuesday evening.

"The IDF aims its actions against Hamas terrorists and not against innocent civilians,” Netanyahu stressed. “But Hamas purposely hides behind Palestinian civilians, and therefore bears responsibility when they are inadvertently hit.”