Israel Strikes Gaza after Rocket Fired from Enclave

File Photo: Smoke rises from a building after it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Reuters file photo
File Photo: Smoke rises from a building after it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Reuters file photo
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Israel Strikes Gaza after Rocket Fired from Enclave

File Photo: Smoke rises from a building after it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Reuters file photo
File Photo: Smoke rises from a building after it was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Reuters file photo

The Israeli air force said it had carried out overnight air strikes against sites of the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave towards Israeli territory.

The Israeli army reported on Saturday evening a rocket had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, the first in a month, AFP said.

The attack came as one of Gaza's larger armed factions, Islamic Jihad, threatened to retaliate after Israeli troops killed two of its leaders in the West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday.

"In response to the rocket fired toward Israeli territory, Israeli army fighter jets targeted overnight (Sunday) a weapons manufacturing site belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization," the Israeli army said in a statement.

The target was a site "where the majority of the organization's rockets in the Gaza Strip are being manufactured", it said.

Israeli army also hit "a Hamas terrorist tunnel in the Southern Gaza Strip", it said.

The army said a few hours later it had targeted a Hamas military post in response to fire from the Gaza Strip against Israeli warplanes.

The armed wing of Hamas said it used anti-aircraft missiles during Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Security sources in Gaza reported two strikes in the south of the enclave, one against a military training site in Khan Younis and the other in an uninhabited area close to Rafah.

The strikes caused no injuries, according to Palestinian medical sources.

"The Zionist enemy is extending its aggression against our people by brutally bombarding the Gaza Strip, following its crime yesterday of executing the martyr Ammar Mufleh in Huwara," Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.

A surge in bloodshed in the occupied West Bank has sparked international criticism of the Israeli army for its use of lethal force against Palestinian civilians.

Criticism has focused on the killing of Ammar Hadi Mufleh, 22, in disputed circumstances in the West Bank town of Huwara, just south of Nablus, on Friday.

At least 145 Palestinians and 26 Israelis have been killed in violence in Israel and the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, this year, the heaviest toll since 2015.

In August, at least 49 Palestinians, including combatants but also civilians, were killed in three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.



With Nowhere Else to Hide, Gazans Shelter in Former Prison

24 July 2024, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Displaced Palestinians stay in Asda prison in Khan Younis after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their homes in the towns of Abasan, Bani Suhaila, Ma'an, Al-Zana and a number of other villages, amid Israel-Hamas conflict. (dpa)
24 July 2024, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Displaced Palestinians stay in Asda prison in Khan Younis after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their homes in the towns of Abasan, Bani Suhaila, Ma'an, Al-Zana and a number of other villages, amid Israel-Hamas conflict. (dpa)
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With Nowhere Else to Hide, Gazans Shelter in Former Prison

24 July 2024, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Displaced Palestinians stay in Asda prison in Khan Younis after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their homes in the towns of Abasan, Bani Suhaila, Ma'an, Al-Zana and a number of other villages, amid Israel-Hamas conflict. (dpa)
24 July 2024, Palestinian Territories, Khan Younis: Displaced Palestinians stay in Asda prison in Khan Younis after the Israeli army ordered them to leave their homes in the towns of Abasan, Bani Suhaila, Ma'an, Al-Zana and a number of other villages, amid Israel-Hamas conflict. (dpa)

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Dardasi's husband has a damaged kidney and just one lung, but no mattress or blanket.

"We are not settled here either," said Dardasi, who like many Palestinians fears she will be uprooted once again.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

Palestinians, many of whom have been displaced several times, say nowhere is free of Israeli bombardment, which has reduced much of Gaza to rubble.

An Israeli air strike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in the Al-Mawasi area on July 13, the territory's health ministry said, in an attack that Israel said targeted Hamas' elusive military chief Mohammed Deif.

On Thursday, Gaza's health ministry said Israeli military strikes on areas in eastern Khan Younis had killed 14 people.

Entire neighborhoods have been flattened in one of the most densely populated places in the world, where poverty and unemployment have long been widespread.

According to the United Nations, nine in ten people across Gaza are now internally displaced.

Israeli soldiers told Saria Abu Mustafa and her family that they should flee for safety as tanks were on their way, she said. The family had no time to change so they left in their prayer clothes.

After sleeping outside on sandy ground, they too found refuge in the prison, among piles of rubble and gaping holes in buildings from the battles which were fought there. Inmates had been released long before Israel attacked.

"We didn't take anything with us. We came here on foot, with children walking with us," she said, adding that many of the women had five or six children with them and that water was hard to find.

She held her niece, who was born during the conflict, which has killed her father and brothers.

When Hamas-led gunmen burst into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7 they killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the air and ground offensive Israel launched in response, Palestinian health officials say.

Hana Al-Sayed Abu Mustafa arrived at the prison after being displaced six times.

If Egyptian, US and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire they have long said is close, she and other Palestinians may be on the move once again. "Where should we go? All the places that we go to are dangerous," she said.