The Israeli military bombed 20 “military facilities” in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning, the army said, in response to a predawn rocket attack that struck a home in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, causing damage but no injury.
A second rocket fired from Gaza landed off the coast of the greater Tel Aviv area, known in Israel as Gush Dan, which consists of the metropolis itself along with a number of large suburbs.
The Israel Defense Forces said it held the Hamas terror group, which rules the coastal enclave, responsible for the attack, regardless of which group specifically launched the rockets.
“There are only two organizations in Gaza that have this caliber of rocket: Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” said IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus. “It’s not hard to narrow down who’s behind it.”
However, in a joint statement, Hamas and PIJ publicly condemned the rocket attack, saying it was “irresponsible” and threatened to derail an Egypt-led negotiation effort.
In response to the early morning rocket attack, the IDF said it bombed some 20 targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including an attack tunnel being dug toward Israel from outside the city of Khan Younis.
The entrance to a naval tunnel west of Khan Younis, which would be used by Hamas’s naval commando unit, was also destroyed in the retaliatory airstrikes, the army said.
In addition, Israeli air force jets bombed a number of weapons factory, military bases and other facilities connected to Hamas’s tunnel-building efforts, Conricus said.
The retaliatory strikes hit targets throughout the Gaza Strip: in Rafah, Khan Younis, Tel al-Hawa, and in the north of the enclave near Beit Lahiya.
Three people were moderately wounded in the strikes near Rafah, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
An Israeli aircraft also targeted a group of Palestinian terrorists as they attempted to launch a projectile at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip, the spokesman said.
The military later released video footage of the airstrike, showing the men loading a launch tube with a shell and taking a few steps away before the aircraft bombed them.
One Palestinian was killed in the strike, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. He was later identified as Naji Ahmed al-Za’anin, 25.
Rocket attacks on Beersheba — home to more than 200,000 people — are rare and considered a major escalation. It was only the second rocket fired at Beersheba since the 2014 Gaza war. The previous rocket, which struck a field north of Beersheba on August 9, came as Palestinians fired dozens of projectiles at Israeli communities along the Gaza border.
Following the rocket attack, schools were closed in Beersheba and in the communities immediately surrounding the Gaza Strip, the army said. Residents of the Gaza periphery were also barred from gathering in groups larger than 300 people outdoors and 500 people indoors.
The attack came as an Egyptian military intelligence delegation was visiting the enclave. Palestinian media reported that the group was working to soothe tensions following the rocket attack and prevent war.
On Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned that the military was gearing up for a major strike on Gaza to stop ongoing violence.
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