After hours of the fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli forces bombed the besieged strip again on Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, after Palestinians fired a rocket from Gaza into Israel, which responded to the rocket with air strikes.
Israeli media said that the rocket landed in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. The rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome’s anti-missile defence system.
No movements in Gaza claimed responsibility for the Tuesday rocket. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, the two biggest armed groups in Gaza, denied their responsibility for the rocket which was fired on Tuesday evening. They said that it was an individual act.
On Monday night, the Egyptian mediation had resulted in reaching a ceasefire in the strip between Israel and Hamas, which has been ruling Gaza since 2007.
The Israeli forces started its recent assault on Gaza on Monday after seven Israeli people were wounded as a result of a Palestinian rocket which hit a house in the farming community of Mishmeret, northern Tel Aviv, early on Monday.
The rocket is the first of its kind to reach central Israel.
The Israeli army said on Wednesday that its fighter jets struck several targets in the city of Khan Younis, southern of the Gaza Strip. The jets’ targets included a military compound and a weapons manufacturing site belonging to Hamas.
The escalation in Gaza Strip comes days before the upcoming Israeli elections, which the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will run in.
