Gaza City: There was no let-up in rocket fire between Gaza and Israel on Wednesday with dozens of rockets exchanged between the two.
So far, seven Palestinians have been killed and five wounded since the bloodshed erupted on Monday morning, but officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said there were no casualties in the overnight air strikes.
Among the sites hit were a training centre used by fighters from the Hamas armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, and several naval police outposts, Palestinian security sources said.
The raids took place several hours after a rocket ploughed into an Israeli border police outpost in Yad Mordechai, just north of the Gaza Strip, wounding four border policemen, one of them seriously, Rosenfeld said.
In total, 45 rockets hit Israel on Tuesday, all of which were claimed by the Hamas armed wing in a rare show of force. Previously, the group had been observing a de facto truce on rocket attacks.
As the violence rumbled on, a senior Gaza official said Egypt was in contact with Israel and the militant groups in a bid to restore the calm.
“The Palestinian factions are ready to return to the calm as long as Israel stops its attacks,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Giora Eiland, Israel’s former national security adviser, said he believed that Hamas would “find a way to calm things down and return the quiet in the next two or three days after proving to the other factions that it is capable of acting against Israel.”
“Neither Hamas nor Israel has any interest in provoking an escalation in the short term,” he told public radio.
