Israeli warplanes conducted two air strikes in northern Gaza early on Wednesday, several hours after militants fired rockets at southern Israel, the military said, despite both sides agreeing a truce.
The raids were launched after a Palestinian rocket hit a town in southern Israel, lightly injuring one person, an army spokesman said.
Palestinian security sources confirmed only one raid which struck a woodyard in northern Gaza City, setting the structure alight but without causing injuries. But a military statement said it had targeted “two terror activity sites in the northern Gaza Strip” in response to rocket fire on southern Israel on Tuesday, which came just hours after Israel and Gaza militant groups had agree to observe a ceasefire.
“The targeting of these sites is in response to the rockets fired at Israel over the past day,” it said. The spokesman said eight rockets had exploded in Israeli territory throughout Tuesday.
Under the terms of a truce agreement which came into force early on Tuesday, both Israel and militants from Islamic Jihad, who were responsible for most of the rocket attacks, had agreed to hold their fire. But there was no indication that either side saw the rocket fire, or the subsequent raids, as putting an end to the Egyptian-brokered agreement.
The fighting erupted on Friday when Israel assassinated a militant leader, prompting armed groups to launch a barrage of rockets across the border.
Israel hit back with multiple air strikes, leaving 25 people dead, most of them militants.
In a separate development, medics said a seven-year-old Baraka al-Mughrabi died on Wednesday from injuries sustained in a shooting accident at a funeral of one of the people killed in the Gaza confrontations.
Family members told AFP he had been critically injured in the head during funeral in eastern Gaza City when there was gunfire in the air.
Emergency services spokesman Adham Abu Selmiya initially said he was hurt in an Israeli air strike but later corrected his account, blaming it on “wrong information” from the hospital.
The fighting erupted on Friday when Israel assassinated a militant leader, prompting armed groups to launch a barrage of rockets across the border, injuring six people.
In response, Israel staged multiple air strikes across Gaza, targeting weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, as well as small groups of militants poised to fire rockets over the border.
