IAF Jets Hit 18 Targets in Gaza Following Shabbat Attack Along Border Fence

Israel Air Force fighter jets attacked a total of 18 targets in the Gaza Strip overnight between Saturday and Sunday after four soldiers were wounded during Shabbat when an explosive device was detonate during a routine patrol of the Israel-Gaza border

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and military spokesmen said they held Hamas, as the governing party in Gaza, responsible for the attack.

“IDF fighter planes struck Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip in response to the terrorist incident earlier today,” an IDF spokesman said in a statement. “A number of terrorist targets were attacked, including an attack tunnel under construction by the Hamas terrorist organization from the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City stretching toward Israeli territory…

“The IDF views Hamas attempts to use supposedly spontaneous popular demonstrations to turn the border region into an arena of conflict and to execute terrorist operations with great severity,” the army said.

Attack targets included eight military installations near the former Israeli town of Netzarim, which was abandoned during the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. The army said the site is now connected to elite Hamas forces, including training infrastructure and weapons factories.

Following the IDF response, Code Red air raid sirens sounded in civilian communities in the Eshkol Regional Council and Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council in the northwestern Negev. A security source initially told TPS that the sirens that sounded in the Eshkol region were most likely set off by machine gun fire toward Israeli jets and helicopters flying over the Gaza Strip. Earlier, the IDF said the sires in the Eshkol region were a false alarm

Howver, Hamas claims it fired anti-aircraft fire at Israeli jets, and mortar landed near to a house in a kibbutz in the Sh’ar Hanegev region, and a rocket hit a house in the Sha’ar Hanegev region, but did not explode.

The initial attack occurred shortly before 5 pm on Shabbat. By 7 pm the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli artillery had destroyed a target east of Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said two members of the IDF bomb disposal unit were seriously injured, while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said described today’s incident in the Gaza Strip as “grave” and said “Israel would respond appropriately.”

“Hamas is responsible for this event and its consequences and for everything that occurs in the Gaza Strip above and below ground,” the army said.