Truce reached after Israel’s biggest strikes
GAZA CITY — Israel unleashed its biggest air strikes on the Gaza Strip since a 2014 war Saturday, killing two Palestinians, while dozens of rockets targeted Israel, but Hamas said a ceasefire had been reached late in the day.
The exchange of fire followed months of ten sion that has raised the prospect of a fourth war in the blockaded Gaza Strip since 2008.
Three Israelis were wounded when a rocket hit a house in the city of
Sderot near the Gaza Strip, authorities said.
The two Palestinians killed were aged 15 and 16, caught in an Israeli strike on a building they were near in the west of Gaza City, the enclave’s health ministry said.
Twenty-five people were wounded across Gaza, the ministry said.
Hamas spokesman FawziBarhoum said late Saturday the Islamist movement, which runs the Gaza Strip, had agreed to an “Egyptian offer to return to a ceasefire to stop this escalation.”
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment, but said its actions would depend on what happens on the ground.
Thick plumes of smoke rose over parts of the Gaza Strip as Israel hit dozens of targets it said belonged to militants, including a high-rise building allegedly used by Hamas as a training facility with a tunnel underneath.
In Israel, air raid sirens sent people rushing to shelters in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip as rockets and mortars were fired from the Palestinian enclave at nearby communities.
Israel said around 100 rockets and mortars were fired, mostly mortars.
Hamas said it fired in defence in response to Israeli air strikes.