More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza, while 67 Israeli soldiers and six Israeli civilians were killed by rockets and guerrilla attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian nationalist groups.
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The Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip late Sunday, targeting Hamas positions in response to a Palestinian rocket attack that hit an Israeli border town. B’chasdei Hashem there were no fatalities or injuries in the attack as a rocket landed between two homes.
Jerusalem and Ankara engaged in a nasty public exchange on Monday over Israel’s air strikes the night before in Gaza, just two days after the Turkish parliament ratified a rapprochement accord with Israel.
“The normalisation of our country’s relations with Israel does not mean we will stay silent in the face of such attacks against the Palestinian people”, it added.
Palestinian medical officials said four people were wounded in the strikes launched after a rocket was sacked from Gaza into the city of Sderot without causing any casualties. “The attacks that injured innocent Palestinian civilians are not acceptable on any grounds”, the Ministry said in a statement.
“The IDF’s equation for its responses on Gaza has changed – and everyone has to get used to this change”, a senior defense source says, according to Channel 2 television.
The rocket, which was claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, fell in a residential area beside a college and Sderot’s railway station, The Times of Israel reported. “Turkey should think twice before criticizing the military actions of others”, he said.
Israeli aircraft struck four targets in the southern Gaza Strip in retaliation for the strike.
A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Israel “carries responsibility for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and this new aggression will not succeed” in weakening the movement.
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The last rocket strike from Gaza was also on Sderot at the beginning of July, and the IDF launched air strikes against Hamas in that case as well. According to the IDF, 14 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza so far in 2016.
