JERUSALEM, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the militant groups in Gaza Strip that they will "pay a heavy price" for Tuesday night's rocket attacks on central and southern Israel.
Rocket barrages fired at Tel Aviv and other major cities in central Israel left a woman killed and dozens of people wounded, according to Israel's Magen David Adom emergency health service.
"Their blood in on their hands," Netanyahu said in a televised statement, directing the threat to the leaders of Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian group that runs Gaza, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group in Gaza.
"The military campaign will take time," he said after meeting senior security officials. "We will restore the security of the citizens of Israel."
Aviv Kochavi, chief of general staff of Israel Defense Forces, said alongside Netanyahu that Israel had attacked 500 targets belonging to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad since Monday.
"We hurt and killed dozens of terror operatives," he said, adding that Hamas and Islamic Jihad "are going to pay even a greater price."
"We are prepared to expand the military campaign as much as needed," he said.
The Israeli military's Homefront Command said in a statement that the schools from southern Israel to Herzliya, a city to the north of Tel Aviv, will be closed on Wednesday.
Three women in Israel and 28 people in Gaza Strip have been reportedly killed since Monday in the worst flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence since Israel's major military assault in Gaza in 2014.
