Israel strikes Gaza after rocket fired from enclave

The atack came as one of Gaza’s larger armed factions, Islamic Jihad, threatened to retaliate ater Israeli troops killed two of its leaders in the West Bank town of Jenin

The Israeli air force said it had carried out overnight air strikes against sites of the Hamas in the Gaza Strip ater a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave towards Israeli territory.

The Israeli army reported a rocket had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, the first in a month.

The atack came as one of Gaza’s larger armed factions, Islamic Jihad, threatened to retaliate ater Israeli troops killed two of its leaders in the West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday.

“In response to the rocket fired toward Israeli territory, IDF fighter jets targeted overnight (on Sunday) a weapons manufacturing site belonging to the Hamas organisation,” the Israeli army said in a statement.

The target was a site “where the majority of the organisation’s rockets in the Gaza Strip are being manufactured,” it said.

Israel Defense Forces also hit “a Hamas terrorist tunnel in the Southern Gaza Strip,” it said.

The army said a few hours later it had targeted a Hamas military post in response to fire from the Gaza Strip against Israeli warplanes.

The armed wing of Hamas said it used antiaircrat missiles during Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Security sources in Gaza reported two strikes in the south of the enclave, one against a military training site in Khan Younis and the other in an uninhabited area close to Rafah.

The strikes caused no injuries, according to Palestinian medical sources.

“The Zionist enemy is extending its aggression against our people by brutally bombarding the Gaza Strip, following its crime yesterday of executing the martyr Ammar Mufleh in Huwara,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.

A surge in bloodshed in the occupied West Bank has sparked international criticism of the Israeli army for its use of lethal force against Palestinian civilians.

Criticism has focused on the killing of Ammar Hadi Mufleh, 22, in disputed circumstances in the West Bank town of Huwara, just south of Nablus, on Friday.

At least 145 Palestinians and 26 Israelis have been killed in violence in Israel and the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, this year, the heaviest toll since 2015.

In August, at least 49 Palestinians, including combatants but also civilians, were killed in three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.

Hamas and other factions have largely honoured the unofficial understandings that have kept the situation in the impoverished territory calm in exchange for thousands of Israeli work permits. Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade on Gaza to prevent Hamas from stocking up weapons.

“The strike overnight continues the progress to impede the force build-up” of Hamas, the Israeli army said.

Critics of the blockade say it is a form of collective punishment that harms Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

While Gaza remained quiet, tension has been boiling for months in the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exerts limited self-rule in parts of the territory.

Israel carried out near daily raids that it says targets wanted Palestinians involved in planning or taking part in atacks, prompted by a spate of Palestinian atacks on Israelis in the spring that killed 19 people.

The military says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future atacks, but the Palestinians say they entrench Israel’s open-ended occupation, now in its 56th year.

A recent wave of Palestinian atacks on Israeli targets killed an additional nine people.

More than 140 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-palestinian fighting this year.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants.

But stone-throwing youths protesting Israeli army incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

A makeshit sidewalk memorial with a Palestinian flag and a mourning notice paid tribute on Saturday to a 22-year-old Palestinian whose death at the hands of an Israeli border police officer — four pistol shots from close range — was captured on widely shared amateur video.