Israeli Warplanes Strike Northern Gaza in Response to Rocket Fire

Israel’s Air Force carried out three airstrikes early on Saturday in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, the Haaretz newspaper reports.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Two rockets were fired on Friday from Gaza at southern Israel – one was intercepted at the city of Ashkelon, while the other one exploded in an open area in Sderot, according to Haaretz.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said as cited by the newspaper on Saturday that rocket fire at Israeli territory would not be tolerated. IDF blamed Hamas for the rocket attacks.

Meanwhile the Omar Brigades, a radical Islamist group affiliated with ISIL took responsibility for the Ashkelon rocket fire in a statement posted on Twitter.

Nobody was killed or injured in the Friday rocket attacks. Information on casualties from Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes carried out in the northern Gaza Strip was not immediately available.

The Jerusalem Post newspaper said on Saturday that the strikes targeted three infrastructure sites in Gaza, including a Hamas-run telecommunications facility.

Palestinians want to create an independent state on the territories of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, partially occupied by Israel, and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, and want Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories it took after the Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel has long accused Hamas, a Palestinian Islamic political organization and the de facto authority in Gaza, of carrying out bomb and missile attacks in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On Friday, at least seven Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli police across the West Bank.