Gaza: Israeli aircraft struck a number of sites in the Gaza Strip from the air early on Wednesday, residents and the Israeli military said.
The Israeli military said it struck four targets in the southern Gaza Strip and that hits were confirmed. There were no reports of any casualties or damage.
Gaza residents said missiles struck several locations throughout the Gaza Strip, including places used as training camps by Islamic Jihad militants on sites that had been Israeli colonies before Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Palestinian militants fired a rocket late Tuesday from the enclave which landed near the Israeli port city of Ashdod.
Tuesday’s rocket landed near Ashdod some 20 kilometres north of the Gaza border and security forces were searching for remnants. It was the longest-range militant rocket strike since a ceasefire which ended last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility in Gaza for the rocket launching.
Israeli media speculated that infighting among Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza Strip may have precipitated the rocket firing without the permission of Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers.
Rival militant factions in Gaza are angry that months after the end of the war, no progress has been made to improve the isolated enclave’s plight and pledges for funding to reconstruct buildings devastated during the war have not been honoured.
Reconciliation efforts between Hamas and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas have faltered, adding to hardships and hampering foreign aid donations and the import of building materials.
Israel maintains a partial blockade on the territory and Egypt largely keeps the Rafah border crossing closed. Hamas has imposed a “solidarity tax” and salaries for workers not aligned with the Palestinian Authority are not being paid in full.
