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Warplanes hit Hamas sites in Gaza in retaliation to rocket fire, Israeli army says

  • The strikes came after Hamas ‘launched a rocket … toward Israeli civilians in southern Israel,’ the army said
  • On Saturday evening, Defence Minister Benny Gantz suspended an increase in Israeli entry permits for Gazan workers in response to the rocket fire

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Fire erupts following an Israeli airstrike south of Gaza City on Saturday. Photo: AFP

Israeli warplanes hit Hamas military sites in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave run by the Islamist movement, the Israeli army said.

“A short while ago, in response to the rocket attack, (Israeli military) aircraft struck a number of Hamas terror targets in the Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement.

The strikes came after Hamas “launched a rocket … toward Israeli civilians in southern Israel”, it said, adding the projectile was intercepted by Israeli air defences.

Fire erupts following an Israeli air strike south of Gaza City on Saturday. Photo: AFP
Fire erupts following an Israeli air strike south of Gaza City on Saturday. Photo: AFP

The Israeli “aircraft targeted a weapons manufacturing site located inside a Hamas military post and an additional three military posts belonging to Hamas,” the statement said.

After the strikes balls of flame shot into the air, leaving dark smoke drifting over the territory.

Later on Saturday, Israel said it was suspending an increase in entry permits for Palestinian workers from Gaza announced earlier this week in response to the rocket fire.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the air raids, in the southeast of Gaza City, were an “extension of the aggression against Palestinian territory in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank,” after the killing of three Palestinians on Friday.

Twelve Palestinians were also wounded in Friday’s Israeli army raid in Jenin, a stronghold of armed Palestinian factions in the West Bank.

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