The Israeli military conducted air raids on the Gaza Strip throughout the night, targeting roads used by militants to reach the launch sites for cross-border rocket attacks, the army and witnesses said yesterday.
Residents in Gaza City said they had been unable to sleep as jets consistently broke the sound barrier during sorties that began shortly after midnight and were wrapped up around daybreak.
Palestinian security sources said that the air strike had targeted roads around the towns of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya in the north of the territory and close to the border into southern Israel. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The army, which has already declared a part of northern Gaza as a security zone, said that the roads were being used by militants to reach areas on the edge of the border into southern Israel.
10 roads attacked
"Our aircraft attacked 10 roads in the north of the Gaza Strip giving access to sectors from where the terrorist organizations can fire Qassam rockets at our territory," she said in reference to rockets named after the armed wing of the radical Islamist movement Hamas.
The raids followed an overnight Qassam attack on the town of Sderot in the south of Israel which caused neither casualties nor damage.
Earlier, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over the north of the Gaza Strip warning inhabitants not to expose themselves by moving around, a military source said.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered the application from Monday night of a decision to create a zone where movement of Palestinians is limited in the north of the Strip, a spokesman for his ministry said.
An army statement said that the leaflets had been dropped "in the areas from which terror activity is being carried out against Israel."
Ongoing attacks
The Israeli Defense Force notified the Palestinian population that it will not tolerate the ongoing attacks carried out by terror organizations against the Israeli population, and has stressed that civilians located in areas from which these organizations operate are endangering themselves.
Israel pulled all its troops out of the Gaza Strip in September, a month after the evacuation of all Jewish settlers from the territory.
Mofaz has played down the idea of staging a ground operation in Gaza, insisting that the army has the means to put an end to the attacks without re-entering the territory.
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