IDF fighter jets and aircraft launched strikes on Hamas military targets in the Gaza Strip last night, in retaliation for the firing of two rockets from the Palestinian enclave at Israel earlier in the evening.
The third attack from Gaza came within 48 hours follows months of relative calm. The missiles targeted the city of Ashkelon and nearby Israeli communities north of Gaza. One of the incoming projectiles was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system, and the second landed in an open field. No injuries or damage were reported in either of the incidents.
The IDF released a statement underscoring that it “views any terror activity against Israel with great severity and is ready to continue operating as necessary against attempts to harm Israeli civilians or sovereignty. The Hamas terror organization is responsible for all events transpiring in the Gaza Strip and emanating from it, and will bear the consequences for terror activity against Israeli civilians.”
A “weapons manufacturing site and underground infrastructure belonging to the Hamas terror organization were struck” by the IDF in response to Thursday’s attack, said the statement.
There have been mounting tensions since Tuesday, 20 October, when the Iron Dome interceptor shot down a Palestinian rocket fired out of Gaza just hours after the IDF exposed a cross-border Hamas terror tunnel from the Strip’s southern city of Khan Younis in the direction of Kibbutz Kissufim in Israel.