Israel on Saturday unleashed its biggest airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since a 2014 war, killing two Palestinians, while dozens of rockets targeted Israel, but Hamas said that a ceasefire had been reached late in the day.
The exchange of fire followed months of tension 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 strip, authorities said.
Photo: AFP
The two Palestinians killed were aged 15 and 16 and were caught in an Israeli strike on a building near them in the west of Gaza City, the Hamas Authority Ministry of Health said.
Twenty-five people were wounded across Gaza, the ministry said.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum late on Saturday said that the movement, which governs the Gaza Strip, had agreed to an “Egyptian offer to return to a ceasefire to stop this escalation.”
An Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman declined to comment, but said that the forces’ actions would depend on what happens on the ground.
Thick plumes of smoke rose over parts of the strip as Israel hit dozens of targets that 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 strip as rockets and mortars were fired from the Palestinian enclave at nearby communities.
Israel said that about 100 rockets and mortars were fired — mostly mortars.
Hamas said it fired in defense in response to the Israeli airstrikes.
Israel blamed Hamas for the escalation, pointing to months of protests and clashes along the border that the IDF says the movement is using as cover for attacks.
Hundreds of fires at Israeli farms have been caused by kites and balloons carrying firebombs from Gaza, leading to political pressure on the government and IDF to take action against Hamas.
The IDF on Saturday said that its strikes targeted military facilities belonging to Hamas.
Among the main targets was the “Hamas Battalion HQ in Beit Lahia, which includes urban warfare training facilities, [a] weapon storage warehouse, training compounds, command centers, offices and more,” the IDF said in a statement.
“A weapons manufacturing site and storage facilities housing various types of weapons, including Hamas’ naval capabilities” were also hit, the statement added.
Airstrikes carried out in the morning hit “complexes used to prepare arson terror attacks and a Hamas terror training facility,” the IDF said.
“We are talking about the biggest offensive strikes since Protective Edge,” IDF Air Force Brigadier General Tzvika Haimovic told journalists, referring to Israel’s name for its 2014 operation in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas had been hit with “the hardest blow” since the 2014 war “and we will increase the strength of our attacks as necessary,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Barhoum said that Hamas was responsible for the barrage against Israel and that it was carried out “in response to the Israeli airstrikes.”
“The protection and the defense of our people is a national duty and a strategic choice,” Barhoum said.
Israel on Monday last week closed its only goods crossing with the Gaza Strip in response to the farm fires.
Hamas called the move a “crime against humanity,” with Gaza already suffering from deep poverty and worsening humanitarian conditions.
On Friday, Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians, including a teenager, and wounded hundreds of others in border clashes.
An Israeli soldier was also moderately wounded when a grenade was thrown at him from the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF said, adding that Molotov cocktails, flaming tires and stones were also hurled in the direction of its soldiers.
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