UPDATES WITH STATEMENT BY PALESTINIAN FACTIONS
By Yaser Albanna, Zeynep Tufekci and Hidaya al-Saedi
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – The Israeli military said early Wednesday that it conducted airstrikes on the Gaza Strip against two targets belonging to Hamas.
On its Twitter account, the Israeli Defense Forces said it held Hamas responsible for rockets allegedly fired into Israeli territory and had responded by targeting two observation posts in northern Gaza.
Later the same day, Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip claimed responsibility for launching rockets into Israeli territory.
In a joint statement, resistance factions — including Hamas — said they had targeted “Zionist military sites” in retaliation for an earlier Israeli strike that had destroyed a civilian vehicle inside the Gaza Strip.
“We will fight bombs with bombs; we will not allow the Zionist occupation to impose its aggressive policies on the Palestinian people,” the statement read.
Israeli warplanes on Tuesday fired a series of missiles at a group of Palestinians flying incendiary kites in the eastern Gaza Strip near the security fence with Israel.
Palestinian activists have been flying incendiary kites and balloons over Israeli territory as part of ongoing demonstrations near the security fence.
Since the rallies began on March 30, at least 132 Palestinian demonstrators have been martyred and thousands more injured by Israeli army gunfire.
Protesters demand the “right of return” to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the new state of Israel.
They also demand an end to Israel’s decade-long blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its roughly two million inhabitants of basic commodities.
