GAZA, Palestinian Territories —
Israeli warplanes launched attacks on various parts of the Gaza Strip early on Saturday,
the Palestinian news agency, Wafa, reported.
اضافة اعلان
The barrage came hours after US President Joe Biden
visited Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Hamas spokesman
Hazem Qassem denounced the strikes,
which Wafa said caused “heavy damage but no injuries”.
According to the news agency, the Israeli strikes
struck a location “near a tourist resort”, which caused serious damage to
nearby houses. The
Israeli warplanes also struck a second location,
west of Nusseirat refugee camp, also damaging nearby homes.
Balls of fire lit up the night sky over Gaza City
after the strikes, which at one location left a hole in the earth beneath
dislodged paving stones in front of a low-rise building, according to AFP.
A man later swept up shattered glass in front of
what appeared to be an office.
Impoverished
Gaza, home to 2.3 million Palestinians,
has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.
Israel claimed the attacks came in retaliation for
firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel.
Biden visit
Before flying to
Saudi Arabia on Friday, Biden visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank where he
reiterated his administration’s commitment to a two-state solution to end the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
There “must be a political horizon that the
Palestinian people can actually see”, Biden said.
“I know that the goal of the two states seems so far
away,” he said in Bethlehem, alongside the Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas said “recognizing the state of Palestine” is
the key to peace.
With Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations moribund
since 2014, the US delegation has been focusing on economic measures.
Biden announced an additional $200 million for the
UNRWA, which saw funding cut by the previous US president Donald Trump.
During a visit earlier Friday to a hospital in
Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, Biden pledged a $100 million aid package for
medical institutions in the area.
He also announced plans to roll out infrastructure
for 4G internet across the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank by the end of next
year, fulfilling a longstanding aspiration among Palestinians.
Biden earlier held talks in Jerusalem with Israeli
interim prime minister Yair Lapid, during which a focal point was Iran’s
nuclear program and that country’s support for Hamas and other Palestinian
resistance movements.
Israel occupied both the Gaza Strip and West Bank in
the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
It withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has maintained a blockade
of the coastal territory since the Hamas takeover.
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