Middle East Desk
Report
Gaza: Israel targeted Hamas positions in southern Gaza after rockets were fired from the blockaded Palestinian enclave, security sources and the army said on Sunday.
Video filmed in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip showed three huge explosions as fighter jets could be heard flying overhead. There was no immediate confirmation of possible casualties. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the attacks targeted a rocket manufacturing facility and Hamas military post. It also blamed the resistance group that runs the Gaza Strip for any violence emanating from the territory it controls.
The IDF announced in a brief message to the press that they were “currently carrying out strikes” in Gaza, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
“Israeli warplanes are targeting a site of the al-Qassam Brigades, west of Khan Yunis” in southern Gaza, Palestinian sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP), referring to Hamas’ military wing.
The sources also reported artillery fire on a Hamas observation base in northern Gaza. It comes after two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, falling into the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Tel Aviv. No sirens were sounded and Israel’s Iron Dome rocket interception system did not deploy, the army said in a statement.
Israel has maintained an illegal blockade on the impoverished enclave since 2007, the year Hamas took power. In early May, tensions in Israel and Palestine flared into the worst disturbances since 2017 when Israeli riot police clashed with large crowds of Palestinians on the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.
Nightly unrest since then at the Al-Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem left more than 700 Palestinians wounded, drawing international calls for de-escalation and sharp rebukes from across the Muslim world.Tensions in the area reached an all-time high in May.
The situation in occupied Palestine was so dire that a senior official from the United Nations warned that the two countries were “heading towards a full-scale war.”
