The Israeli Air Force announced that it launched airstrikes early today against “military installations” in Gaza Stripa few hours after rockets were fired from the Palestinian enclave against Israeli territory.
Late Thursday, the Israeli military and local imgs reported the first rocket launches since August from the Gaza Strip, some of which fell inside the densely populated Palestinian enclave and another was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
New exchanges of fire follow the electoral victory of Benjamin Netanyahu in the parliamentary elections held on Tuesday in Israel and the Israeli raid on Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian armed organizations in the occupied West Bank, against a senior official of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization, the second most powerful Palestinian Islamist faction after Hamas, which exercises power in the Gaza Strip.
Following the rocket launches, aircraft “targeted an underground military rocket manufacturing facility” belonging to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Twitter, according to AFP and the Athens News Agency.
Sources close to the security forces in Gaza for their part spoke of about ten strikes against two “military installations” in the central part of the enclave of 2.3 million inhabitants.
At least 49 Palestinians, fighters and civilians, including children, died between August 5 and 7 in hostilities between the Israeli army and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in the Gaza Strip, an enclave under Israeli blockade since 2007 and it remains separated, geographically and politically, from the West Bank.
The US is worried about the escalation of tension
THE American Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken expressed his “deep concern” about “rising tensions” in the occupied West Bank during a phone call with outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday night.
Blinken “expressed his deep concern about the situation in the West Bank, especially the increasing tension, violence and loss of human life – on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides – and underlined the need for all sides to work immediately for de-escalation,” the State Department said in a statement.
The occupied West Bank is experiencing its bloodiest period in years as Israel prepares to form the most right-wing government in the country’s history under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who together with his allies managed to win an absolute majority in the Knesset. after the fifth election in four years.
The Palestinian territory is the scene of almost daily raids by the Israeli army, while there is an increase in conflicts and attacks against Israeli forces. Yesterday Thursday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians, including an alleged perpetrator of an anti-Israeli attack, as well as an Islamist militant.
Blinken in his conversation with Lapid “congratulated Israel for the free and fair elections it held and thanked him for their cooperation.”
Source: News Beast
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