Friday June 18, 2021
After attacks with fire balloons
Israel flies new air strikes
Hamas has stopped firing rockets from the Gaza Strip since the May 21 ceasefire. The militant Palestinians are now sending incendiary devices across the border by balloon. Israel reacts to this with new air strikes.
For the second time this week, Israel carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip. In retaliation for new attacks with fire balloons from the Palestinian Territory, fighter jets fired at a military base and a rocket launch site of the radical Islamic Hamas on Friday night, the army announced. AFP reporters in the Gaza Strip reported several detonations. Hamas said it responded to the air strikes with fire from machine guns.
The Israeli air force had already launched retaliatory attacks in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night. Previously, Palestinian militants had launched incendiary devices attached to balloons to Israel in protest against a deployment of far-right Israelis in Jerusalem. It was the first Israeli air strikes in Gaza since the end of eleven days of rocket fire between Israel and Hamas in May and the new Israeli government took office on Sunday.
Israel’s conflict with Hamas escalated on May 10 when the Palestinian Organization fired massive rockets at Israel in response to clashes between Palestinians and police in East Jerusalem. By the time a ceasefire brokered by Egypt came into effect on May 21, 260 Palestinians had been killed. The rocket attacks on Israel resulted in 13 deaths during this period.
The series of incendiary balloon attacks from Gaza this week sparked numerous fires. The Israeli army called their air strikes the “answer” to the incendiary balloons. The targets attacked on Friday night were in Gaza City and in the city of Chan Junis in the south of the densely populated Gaza Strip.
After the recent Israeli air strikes, Hamas fighters fired machine guns at Israeli settlements on the Gaza border and from Israeli surveillance drones, a Hamas representative told AFP. In several Israeli villages on the border with the Gaza Strip, sirens rang on Friday night because of the gunfire.
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