GAZA CITY: Israeli aircraft pounded over a dozen militant targets in Gaza, the army said on Sunday, after Palestinian projectile fire shattered a ceasefire reached just days ago after the worst flare-up since a 2014 war.

The latest escalation came hours after thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of a young female volunteer medic killed by Israeli fire in violence on the border in southern Gaza.

In a first wave of air strikes, Israeli “fighter jets targeted 10 terror sites in three military compounds belonging to the Hamas terror organisation in the Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement early on Sunday.

“Among the targets were two Hamas munition manufacturing and storage sites and a military compound,” the army said.

The strikes were retaliation to rockets fired at Israel, as well as “various terror activities approved and orchestrated by the Hamas terror organisation over the weekend,” the army said.

The army listed a series of attempted attacks at soldiers on the border fence, as well as “damaging security infrastructure and igniting fires in Israeli territory with the use of arson kites and balloons”.

A few hours later aircraft shot at “five terror targets at a military compound belonging to the Hamas terror organization’s naval force in the northern Gaza Strip,” the army said in a separate statement. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Gaza.

On Saturday evening, militants in the Palestinian enclave fired two projectiles at southern Israel, where air raid sirens sent residents to bomb shelters.

The Iron Dome aerial defence system intercepted one of the projectiles, while the other was believed to have fallen short of its target and hit within Gaza, according to the army. Early on Sunday, four more projectiles were separately launched at Israel.

Three were intercepted, the army said, with the fourth apparently hitting an open field.

No group in Gaza claimed responsibility for the projectile attacks, which came shortly after the Saturday funeral of Razan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer with the Gaza health ministry, who was fatally shot in the chest near Khan Yunis on Friday.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2018