Israeli planes hit Hamas positions in Gaza after rocket attacks

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Israeli warplanes struck targets in Gaza early Wednesday after Palestinian militants fired five rockets toward Israel in the besieged coastal area.

The Israeli army said its airstrikes had targeted underground weapons-making infrastructure linked to Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Israel or Gaza.

The cross-border exchanges took place as Israeli forces began withdrawing from the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed the camp on Monday in the biggest raid in the region since the end of the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada in 2005.

Israel’s military said the raid – which killed 12 Palestinians, wounded more than 140 and forced 500 families to flee – was part of an operation to dislodge fighters from Jenin, which has long It was a stronghold of the militants. Palestinian leaders have condemned the attack on the densely populated camp, which houses some 14,000 people, as a “war crime”.

The Israeli army said on Wednesday that an Israeli soldier was also killed in the fighting.

The flare-up is the latest incident of rising violence in a year that has fueled long-standing fears that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is escalating even more broadly.

According to the latest UN figures, which do not include this week’s violence, Israeli forces have killed 147 Palestinians this year, while Palestinians have killed 23 Israelis.

Hostilities have been particularly intense in the West Bank – which Palestinians want as the center of a future state but which Israel has occupied since 1967 – the year since the UN began collecting data in 2005 Already on course to be the deadliest in the region. ,

Over the past two weeks, violence has reached new levels, with Israeli forces deploying helicopter gunships and armed drones to the area for the first time in two decades, before launching Monday’s raid on the Jenin refugee camp.

Another eight people were injured in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after a Palestinian rammed his car into passers-by and then attacked bystanders with a knife, in what Hamas said was a “natural reaction” to the attack on Jenin.

In recent weeks, the Israeli army has also engaged in gunfights with militants in Gaza. In May, Israel and Islamic Jihad militants engaged in their fiercest fighting since 2021.

The Palestinian group fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israel, which struck more than 300 locations in Gaza during five days of shelling.