Israeli strikes hit Gaza after rockets fired overnight
Israeli forces bombed the Gaza Strip after Palestinian fighters launched several rockets from the besieged coastal enclave amid tensions over an Israeli raid that killed at least 11 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus.
The attacks early on Thursday (23 February) sent plumes of black smoke rising over one of the targeted locations north of Gaza city. There were no immediate reports of casualties, reports Al Jazeera.
Hours earlier, rockets fired from the Gaza Strip lit up the night sky and triggered sirens in the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon.
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Palestinian witnesses said they saw at least eight rockets fired, while the Israeli military put the number of projectiles at six.
The Israeli military said its air defence system intercepted five of the rockets, while the sixth fell in an uninhabited area. No Palestinian group has yet claimed responsibility for Thursday's rocket fire.
The rocket launches came after the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad group condemned the Israeli military's raid in Nablus on Wednesday (22 February) as a "major crime" that the "resistance must respond to".
Hamas, which governs the coastal enclave, had also issued a warning, with spokesman Abu Obeida saying "the resistance in Gaza is observing the enemy's escalating crimes against our people in the occupied West Bank". He added that their "patience is running out".
The Nablus raid was one of the deadliest Israeli operations in the occupied West Bank since the second Intifada or the Palestinian uprising of 2000-2005.
The death toll on Wednesday surpassed that of an Israeli attack last month in the city of Jenin, further north.
Nablus and nearby Jenin have been the focus of violent incursions that Israel has intensified over the past year, reports Associated Press.
The cities are where "the concentration of armed resistance is growing", said a Palestinian journalist.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the start of 2023 has now risen to 61 people, including 13 children, in the occupied territories.
Israel stepped up its military raids, arrests and killings in Palestinian cities and villages in the occupied West Bank from June 2021, following a popular Palestinian uprising known as the "May outburst" that swept Israel and the Palestinian territories it has illegally occupied since 1967.
Civilians confronting the Israeli army during raids and uninvolved bystanders have been killed, as well as Palestinian fighters in targeted assassinations and during armed clashes.
In March 2022, following a series of individual Palestinian attacks inside Israel, the Israeli army launched a military campaign that led to 2022 being marked by the United Nations as the deadliest year for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2006.
Some 171 Palestinians, including more than 30 children, were killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank last year.
