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Israel Strikes Hamas in Gaza, Calling Attack Response to Rocket Fire


Palestinian fishing boats moored in the Gaza seaport in Gaza City, Thursday, June 13, 2019. The Israeli military took the rare step of closing the Gaza Strip's offshore waters to Palestinian fishermen Wednesday until further notice.
Palestinian fishing boats moored in the Gaza seaport in Gaza City, Thursday, June 13, 2019. The Israeli military took the rare step of closing the Gaza Strip's offshore waters to Palestinian fishermen Wednesday until further notice.

Israeli aircraft attacked a Hamas target in the Gaza Strip on Thursday after a Palestinian rocket strike, the Israeli military said, in the first serious cross-border flare-up since a surge in fighting last month.

A second rocket launched in the evening hit a house in the Israeli border town of Sderot but caused no casualties, police said. There was no immediate comment from Palestinian factions.

The latest hostilities followed Israel's closure of offshore waters to Gaza fisherman on Wednesday in what it said was a response to incendiary balloons launched across the frontier that caused fires in fields in southern Israel this week.

In a statement, the military said fighter planes attacked "underground infrastructure" in a compound belonging to the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza. There were no injuries.

The military said it was responding to a rocket fired from Gaza overnight that was intercepted by Iron Dome air defenses. Israel signaled it was trying to contain the confrontation.

"There'll be another (military) campaign in the Gaza Strip," security cabinet minister Yoav Gallant told Reshet 13 TV.

"We will decide the timing and we will decide the conditions. And I will not play into Hamas' hands when it is the one that wants do this (escalation)."

In two days of heavy fighting in early May, projectiles from Gaza killed four civilians in Israel, local health officials said, and Israeli strikes killed 21 Palestinians, over half of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.

A ceasefire mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations ended that round of violence.

Some two million Palestinians live in Gaza, whose economy has suffered years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts and sanctions by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas's rival in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop arms reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from the small coastal enclave.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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