JERUSALEM: Israeli warplanes hit Hamas military sites in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in retaliation for rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave run by the Islamist movement, the Israeli army said.

“A short while ago, in response to the rocket attack, (Israeli military) aircraft struck a number of Hamas terror targets in the Gaza Strip,” the army said in a statement.

The strikes came after Hamas “launched a rocket... towards Israeli civilians in southern Israel”, it said, adding the projectile was intercepted by Israel’s air defences.

The Israeli “aircraft targeted a weapons manufacturing site located inside a Hamas military post and an additional three military posts belonging to Hamas,” the statement said.

After the strikes balls of flame shot into the air, leaving dark smoke drifting over the territory.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the air raids, in the southeast of Gaza City, “are an extension of the aggression against Pales­tinian territory in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank,” after the killing of three Palestinians on Friday.

Qassem made no mention of whether Saturday’s air strikes caused any casualties.

Published in Dawn, June 19th, 2022