The Israeli Air Force fired in the early hours of this morning in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the launch of balloons with adapted incendiary devices against the southern part of the Israeli territory, as reported by sources close to the Palestinian the Israeli army.
The strikes and the use of balloons to provoke arson are the first serious incidents since May 21, when the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian organizations in the enclave entered into force after 11 days of lightning-fast fighting. 260 dead on the Palestinian side, including children, teenagers and fighters, and 13 dead in Israel, including a child, a teenager and a soldier.
According to Palestinian sources, the Israeli Air Force struck at least one facility east of Khan Yunis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, a pocket of two million people where about a thousand apartments, offices and shops were destroyed in the new Israeli war. since 2008. A French Agency photographer said he heard several explosions. The same was reported by the Reuters news agency, citing eyewitnesses.
These are the first Israeli strikes on the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas Islamists and a suffocating Israeli blockade after a heterogeneous alliance came to power on Sunday night, ending the 12 years of Benjamin Stalin’s monarchy.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had hit a Hamas militant base in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for firing balloons with adapted incendiary devices that had set fire to fields in southern Israel. He said he was “ready for all scenarios”, including “the resumption of hostilities”, in the face of “continuing terrorist attacks in Gaza”.
The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a crowd of protesters in the eastern city of Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people and wounding at least 12 others, officials said.
The United States and the United Nations have called for “restraint” ahead of this highly controversial move, which the new Israeli government of Naftali Bennett has made possible, but changing its course to avoid incidents with Palestinians.
Hamas has threatened retaliation if the march, which was aimed at celebrating the occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the holy city, in the 1967 war, took place in Muslim neighborhoods.
