GAZA City: Israel targeted militant sites in Gaza, after Palestinians shot at its forces near the border, the military said Friday, using airstrikes and tank fire that Hamas said killed three of its members.
The militant Islamic Hamas that rules Gaza said the three Palestinians killed were members of the group. Gaza media reported that gunmen fired mortars toward the border.
Earlier Friday, Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman visited Sderot, an Israeli town near Gaza that has been hard hit by Palestinian rockets over the years. “The heads of Hamas are forcibly leading us to a no choice situation in which we will need to embark on wide and painful military operation,” Lieberman said.
On Saturday, Israel pounded Hamas targets in its largest bombardment campaign since the 2014 war, as Gaza militants fired dozens of rockets toward Israel.
Israel says it has no interest is engaging in another war with Hamas, but says it will no longer tolerate the Gaza militant campaign of daily flying incendiary kites and balloons across the border that have torched Israeli crops, burned nature reserves and killed wildlife.
Hamas on Friday vowed it will continue to protest by launching the incendiary devices at Israel.
Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas leader, said “the protests will remain, flaming and existing, and its tools will multiply and diversify, including kites, until our goals are achieved.”
The weekly protests led by Gaza’s Hamas rulers against Israel are meant in part to draw attention to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after the militant group assumed control of Gaza in 2007.
The demonstrations have been fueled in large part by pervasive despair caused by the blockade which has caused widespread economic hardship.
Over 135, mostly unarmed, Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the border protests began on March 30.
Israel says it is defending its sovereign border and accuses Hamas, a group sworn to its destruction, of using the protests as cover for attempts to breach the border fence and attack civilians and soldiers.
