Rocket fired from Gaza, IDF counterstrikes 3 Hamas posts

The IDF on announced on Saturday that a rocket fell in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Friday evening.

By Associated Press

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket into the country’s south. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

In response, Israeli tanks and aircraft struck three sites belonging to the Hamas terror group. The Israeli military described the targets as “infrastructure used for underground activity.”

The fire shattered weeks of a rare total calm along the often-volatile frontier between Israel and Gaza, a coastal territory ruled by Hamas.

No Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for the launching but Israel usually blames Hamas for any attack originating from the enclave it controls.

The calm had prevailed as Gaza and Israel struggle to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Nine cases of the virus have been confirmed in the Gaza Strip amid fears that its under-resourced health system will not be able to handle an outbreak.

Since wresting control of the coastal enclave from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody coup in 2005, Hamas has choked off funds for basic needs in Gaza, diverting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to attack Israeli civilians using rocket assualts, airborne arson campaigns, and terror attacks.

Israel has recorded 12 deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, and over 3,000 infections.