IDF bombs 15 Hamas targets in response to rocket fire from Gaza

In two waves of air strikes Saturday night and early Sunday,  the air force bombed Hamas military bases. 

By: World Israel News Staff

Israeli Air Force jets carried out 15 airstrikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip late Saturday night and Sunday morning, the IDF spokesperson reported.

The strikes were in retaliation for rockets and mortars fired toward southern Israeli communities earlier on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, including attempts to damage the security border fence and using burning kites to set fields on fire within Israel, the IDF spokesperson reported.

The Iron Dome anti-missile battery shot down four projectiles fired at Israel that were headed for Jewish communities. Two more projectiles landed in empty areas.

The air force on Saturday night carried out 10 airstrikes on Hamas targets in response to earlier rocket fire.

Israeli jets early on Sunday morning carried out a second round of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in a matter of hours, the army said, after four projectiles were fired overnight at southern Israel by Palestinian terror groups in the coastal enclave, shattering an unofficial ceasefire agreement.

If Hamas “chooses to follow a path of terrorism and not solve the difficulties of the people of Gaza it will continue to pay a heavy price that will only become steeper, as much as needed,” said the IDF spokesperson.

The Hamas-affiliated Shehab news agency reported that Israel struck sites in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, in the Nuseirat refugee camp and outside the city of Khan Younis.

The Palestinian Quds news site reported Israeli strikes outside the city of Rafah.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The renewed rocket fire followed significant clashes on the Gaza border on Friday and a massive flareup last week, in which Palestinian terror groups launched over 100 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel and the military responded by striking more than 65 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad sites in the Strip.

Palestinian arson destroys nature reserve

During the day, several hundred acres of land in proximity to the Gaza border – including a nature reserve adjacent to Kibbutz Carmia and farmland on Kibbutz Nir Am –suffered the worst fire attacks since the start of the violent, Hamas-orchestrated “March of Return.”

The terror was in response to the death of a Razan Najjar, a female Palestinian medic hit by IDF fire during while treating a Palestinian protester during violent clashes near the border fence.