"Great caution must be exercised to prevent Palestinians who are not involved in terrorism from being hit," General Eliezer Shkedi told army radio.

Nevertheless, he made it clear that Israel would continue to launch air strikes over Gaza, which ground troops left last September following a 38-year occupation.

"In the current circumstances, it is the most efficient tactic against terrorists who fire rockets at Israel," he said.

Shkedi said that since the beginning of 2006, Israel had carried out five times the number of air strikes launched last year, when the military still carried out ground operations inside the Gaza Strip.

On Wednesday, a pregnant woman and a male relative were killed in an air strike in the southern Gaza Strip when two missiles fired by an aircraft missed the intended target of a car carrying suspected militants.

On Tuesday, two young children and a teenager died in a similarly botched raid that the militant target managed to escape.

Then again, nine civilians were killed in an air raid on June 13, four days after another eight civilians died in an explosion while picnicking on the beach in an attack a rights group blamed on an Israeli shell.

Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz has ordered the air force to investigate recent attacks, to determine whether the catalogue of mistakes were due to technological malfunction or errors of command, public radio reported.

Defence Minister Amir Peretz also instructed Halutz to make it clear once again to commanders that a mission must be cancelled if it endangers innocent people, the radio reported.

The growing number of civilian deaths has incurred heavy international criticism from Middle East peace sponsors, Russia and the United Nations, which called on Israel to respect international law, and from EU heavyweight Britain.

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