OCCUPIED JERUSALEM —
Israeli warplanes conducted air attacks on the
Gaza Strip early Saturday, causing heavy damage but no injuries, reported to
the Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
اضافة اعلان
The Israeli
military said the strikes were in retaliation to rocket fire from the
Palestinian enclave, according to AFP.
“A short while
ago, in response to the rocket attack, (Israeli military) aircraft struck a
number of Hamas terror targets in the
Gaza Strip,” Israeli forces claimed.
However,
Palestinian media, carried by Al Jazeera, said the Israeli strikes fell on
agricultural land in Gaza.
Wafa reported
that the center of the Strip was hit by five Israeli missiles destroying the
site. Two missiles were fired at the Malaka site, southeast of Gaza City,
destroying it completely. Israel also fired two missiles at a location north of
Beit Lahiya and another east of Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip,
destroying them in total and causing damage to nearby homes.
After the
strikes, balls of flame shot into the air, leaving dark smoke drifting over the
Strip, according to AFP.
The strikes came
after Hamas “launched a rocket... toward Israeli civilians in southern Israel”,
Israel said, adding the projectile was intercepted by Israel’s air defenses.
Israeli forces
also said hours earlier that air raid sirens sounded in the southern Israeli
city of Ashkelon and in areas near the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Hamas spokesman
Hazem Qassem said the air raids in the southeast of Gaza City “are an extension
of the aggression against Palestinian territory in Jerusalem and the occupied
West Bank” after Israel killed three Palestinians on Friday.
The men were
killed when Israeli forces opened fire on their vehicle, the Palestinian news
agency Wafa said. Twelve Palestinians were also wounded in that same incident
during an Israeli raid in Jenin.
One of the dead
was a Hamas commander, the group said, vowing that the killings “will not go
unpunished”.
Qassem made no
mention of whether Saturday’s air strikes caused any casualties.
In April, Israeli
warplanes also hit Gaza after Palestinian armed groups fired rockets from Gaza.
The impoverished
Gaza coastal enclave of 2.3 million people has been under an Israeli blockade
since 2007.
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