Israel air raids in Gaza Strip after rocket attacks

GAZA STRIP - Israeli aircraft carried out attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip early yesterday, hours after three rockets were fired from the Palestinian enclave towards southern Israel.

The air raids targeted two sites belonging to the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing, in northern Gaza with another series of sorties at a Qassam site west of Gaza City, Hamas officials said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in Gaza. The Israeli army said “fighter jets and attack helicopters struck a number of Hamas terror targets” in Gaza, as well as “a military post belonging to the Hamas naval force in the northern Gaza Strip”. No Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, but the Israeli army said Hamas was responsible for any attack

“transpiring and emanating” from the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas will bear the consequences for actions against Israeli civilians”, the army said in a statement.

All three projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system, the army said. Medics treated three people in the southern Israeli settlement of Sderot who suffered minor injuries while seeking shelter as air raid sirens went off, the Magen David Adom emergency medical service said.

Last month, Israeli forces assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad leader in the Gaza Strip, sparking a twoday flareup that killed 36 Palestinians. Israel has fought three wars with Hamas and allied armed groups in Gaza since 2008.

(Al Jazeera)