IDF hits Hamas targets in Gaza, responding to upsurge in violence

Gaza terrorists have been launching incendiary balloons into southern Israel throughout the week.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel’s Defense Forces have struck a number of key intelligence-gathering posts and other strategic targets in the Gaza Strip during the week following an uptick of attacks from Gaza, an IDF spokesperson said in a statement.

“The IDF views with great severity all destructive activities of all types towards Israeli territory and will continue to act as necessary against attempts to harm [Israeli] citizens,” the statement said.

In response to Israel’s retaliatory strikes, Hamas will continue “in their struggle until the siege is lifted completely and we return the freedom of the citizens of the Gaza Strip,” a spokesperson for the terrorist group said.

Gaza terrorists have been launching incendiary balloons into southern Israel throughout the week.

On Thursday, incendiary balloons were reported to have exploded in the air near the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council as well as near the town of Sderot, and incendiary balloons were reported to have been defused by IDF bomb specialists near the southern cities of Dimona and Kiryat Gat.

On Wednesday, gift-wrapped explosive devices tied to several balloons that landed in Sdot HaNegev Regional Council.

In addition, three rockets were fired by Gazan terrorists into southern Israel on Thursday.

Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepted two of the rockets, and the third landed in an empty field in Sderot. No one was directly injured by the attack, but a three-week-old baby girl was wounded seriously when she fell out of her mother’s arms on the way to a safety shelter.

The attacks from Hamas follow the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century,” a peace plan that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have rejected.