The Israeli Air Force has conducted strikes at the rocket manufacturing site, underground facilities and a military post of the Hamas Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian exclave, the Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday.
On late Friday, air raid sirens sounded in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and the areas near the border with the Gaza Strip. According to the IDF, two rockets have been fired from the exclave and both of them have been intercepted by the Iron Dome aerial defence system.
“In response to the rockets fired from Gaza toward Israel tonight, the Israeli Air Force struck Hamas terror targets including rocket manufacturing site, underground infrastructure, a military post,” the IDF wrote on its Twitter page.
Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni militant organization in control of the Gaza Strip, has been locked in a protracted on-and-off conflict with Israel, which still refuses to recognize Palestine as an independent political and diplomatic entity. Israel holds Hamas responsible for any attack coming from the Gaza Strip.