The Israeli army carried out strikes on Saturday, June 18, on positions of the Palestinian movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in response to a rocket fire launched from this territory which was intercepted, according to a military statement.
Before dawn, “The Islamist movement Hamas fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip at Israeli citizens in southern Israel”. The rocket was intercepted by the anti-missile shield, underlines the text.
In retaliation, the army carried out a series of strikes on Hamas positions in the Palestinian enclave, which has been under an Israeli blockade for more than fifteen years. “Planes targeted a Hamas weapons manufacturing site as well as three Hamas military posts”the army said in the statement.
The last Israeli rocket attacks and strikes on Gaza date back to last April.
On Friday, three armed Palestinians, including a Hamas commander, were killed in exchanges of fire with Israeli forces, who were carrying out an operation in the Jenin area, in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel for more than fifty years. Hamas claimed that one of the three dead was a local commander of the Islamist movement and that his death “will not go unpunished”.