GAZA CITY: The armed wing of Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement yesterday said it fired 10 Grad rockets at Israel in a rare show of force after three Israeli air strikes killed six Palestinians.
The claim came shortly after Israel yesterday afternoon staged another air strike over Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, injuring two men on a motorcycle, one of them critically, medics said. Such fire by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, which generally maintains a tacit truce with Israel, is very rare.
“This is our answer to the Zionist crimes. It will continue if they carry out more strikes on Gaza,” a statement said, with a spokesman confirming it was the first time they had fired such longer-range rockets at Israel since April 2011.
The Israeli military confirmed that 11 rockets had hit southern Israel since midnight, but could not say whether all of them were Grads. Another three rockets were fired on Monday.
A military spokesman also confirmed there was “a targeted strike” on Deir Al-Balah but did not have any further information about the target. Army figures show that since the start of 2012, Gaza fighters have fired more than 290 rockets into Israel.
Earlier yesterday, the bodies of two Palestinian teenagers were recovered by medics after an early morning air strike, also in Deir Al-Balah.
This raised to six the number of Palestinians killed in a series of Israeli strikes since Monday, all carried out just hours after a deadly ambush along Israel’s southern border with Egypt.
Israel has said the sudden spike — three deadly air raids in just over 12 hours — was “in no way related” to the border incident, with the military saying the air force targeted militants planning or engaged in anti-Israeli attacks.
The overnight strike which killed two 17-year-old youths took place shortly after midnight but their bodies were only recovered after dawn “when an ambulance could get to the scene,” medics told AFP.
