Israel carried out an airstrike early Thursday morning in central Gaza, hours after the military said it had intercepted a rocket fired from Palestinian territory, according to journalists and witnesses.
A new round of rockets has been launched Gaza After these attacks, another explosion was heard from Gaza City at around 3:15 am local time, Agence France-Presse journalists reported.
In a statement issued at 2:41 a.m., the Israeli military confirmed that it was “attacking the Gaza Strip.”
The first attack (at least seven times) hit the training center of the Ezdin al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, according to local security sources and witnesses. It is located in the Magaji Refugee Camp in the province.
Local security sources said a second Israeli airstrike targeted the Al-Qassam Brigades training center southwest of Gaza City.
After the first airstrike, an AFP reporter saw two more rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and witnesses said several more rockets were fired from various locations. Stated.
Densely populated with 2.3 million people, Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas came to power in 2007.
The secular Palestinian armed group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed to have fired rockets “in response to the Zionist invasion in the Gaza Strip…”.
On the Israeli side, alarm sirens sounded in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, near the Gaza Strip, according to the military.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Brinkenfinished the Middle East tour at No breakthrough in easing tensions He said it was “basically up to them” to end the violence after days of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians.
Brinken said he heard “deep concerns about the current trajectory” at the December 2018 meeting. Israel and the occupied West Bank, but he offered no new U.S. initiatives other than calling for “de-escalation.”
Israeli operations in the Jenin refugee camp last week. West Bank’s deadliest raid in decades, killed 10 Palestinians. Most of them were gunmen, but they also killed two civilians, including a 61-year-old woman.The next day, a Palestinian gunman Killed 7 Israelis outside the synagogue In East Jerusalem in the worst such attack in recent memory.
About 20 people have died in the past week as rising tensions led to retaliatory attacks, including shootings targeting Israelis and Palestinians.
