Palestinian gunmen fired at least one rocket from Gaza into Israel Sunday afternoon, that landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, less than a mile from the border with the Gaza Strip.
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“‘In response to the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, the IAF (Israeli air force) and tanks targeted two Hamas posts in the northern Gaza Strip”, Lerner said in a statement.
The Israeli military pounded the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, injuring two Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said: “We hold [Israel] responsible for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and we stress that its aggression will not succeed in breaking the will of our people and dictate terms to the resistance”.
Ynet quoted an official as saying that the hits Hamas took on Sunday night were “the hardest they’ve taken since Operation Protective Edge”, the IDF’s 2014 effort to stop rocket fire from Gaza that escalated into a conflict with the terrorist group that lasted almost two months. The Gaza health ministry said two people were injured in the strikes.
“The attacks, which caused injuries to innocent Palestinian civilians, are not acceptable regardless of their grounds”, Turkey’s Andalou News Agency quoted the Turkish ministry as saying.
Israeli jets and artillery hit several military installations in Gaza overnight after a missile was sacked into the Israeli town of Sderot on Sunday afternoon.
“The normalisation of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations”, said its foreign ministry.
Both Hamas and other splinter Islamic organizations have launched rocket attacks into Israeli territory in the past.
Israel and Turkey cut ties in 2010 after the Mavi Marmara incident, in which the Israeli navy raided a vessel carrying activists poised to break the Israeli-imposed siege on the Gaza enclave.
Five people were arrested outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Monday after climbing over the compound’s fence during a small protest against Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.
A 10th died after years in a coma.
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The following year, Erdogan – then prime minister – denounced Israel as a “terrorist state”, accusing it of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.
