According to AFP journalists and witnesses, Israel carried out airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night, hours after intercepting a rocket fired from that Palestinian territory.
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Several new Palestinian rockets were fired after the attacks, and around 3:15 a.m. (0115 GMT) more explosions and aircraft noise could be heard from Gaza City, where a strong wind was blowing.
In a statement issued at 2:41 am (0041 GMT), the Israeli army confirmed that it was “about to attack the Gaza Strip”.
According to local security sources and witnesses, the first attacks (at least seven) hit a training center of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in the al-Maghazi refugee camp (central Gaza Strip). .
An AFP reporter saw two new rockets launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip after the attacks, and witnesses spoke of several more rockets being fired from various locations in the 2.3 million-mile micro-territory that has been inhabited since the Israelis took power Hamas is under Israeli blockade in 2007.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Palestinian armed group, claimed to have “carried out rocket fire […] in response to Zionist aggression in the Gaza Strip” among others.
On the Israeli side, according to the army, the warning sirens sounded in Sderot, a city in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip.
According to local security sources, the second round of Israeli airstrikes targeted an al-Qassa Brigades training center southwest of Gaza City.