The Israeli air force carried out new strikes on the night of Thursday, June 17 to Friday, June 18 against targets of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to the army and witnesses.
The IDF said its fighter jets targeted Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for incendiary balloon fire earlier Thursday, and Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters in this report. Palestinian territory also reported blasts overnight.
This is the second round of Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the week and the end of the eleven-day war, from May 10 to 21, with the armed Islamist movement Hamas which is in power in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian micro-territory of two million inhabitants.
Targeted Hamas positions
The Israeli army claimed to have targeted a Hamas military site and a rocket launch site, located respectively in Gaza City and Khan Younes, a city in the south of this enclave which had been blockaded by Israel for nearly fifteen years.
And the head of the army, General Aviv Kohavi, asked his staff “To increase the preparation of the army” to one “Series of scenarios” including “The resumption of hostilities” after the last war which claimed the lives of 260 Palestinians, including children and adolescents, and 13 people in Israel including a child, a teenage girl and a soldier.
These new exchanges of fire come as Egypt tries to consolidate the fragile ceasefire that made it possible to end this lightning war.
