Israeli warplanes carried out retaliatory strikes in the Gaza Strip and fresh rocket alarms sounded in Israeli communities bordering the Palestinian enclave Friday morning, hours after two rockets were fired at southern Israel in apparent response to a deadly raid in the West Bank a day earlier.
Palestinian media sources reported a series of bombing raids in the central Gaza Strip just before 3:30 a.m. Friday, apparently targeting sites belonging to the Hamas terror group, which rules the Strip. The army confirmed carrying out raids.
Shortly after the reported airstrikes, incoming rocket alarms sounded in the towns Nir Oz, Ein Habesor and Magen, the army said.
The Palestinian Shehab news agency claimed that Gazan fighters fired anti-aircraft weapons at the planes as well as ground to air missiles.
There were no reports of injuries on either side.
Footage published on social media showed several large explosions from the airstrikes in Gaza.
Video / #IAF ???????? airstrike on Hamas' position, Al Mughazi, central #Gaza pic.twitter.com/FKxbZK0Yj4
— Aleph א (@no_itsmyturn) January 27, 2023
⚠️Right before renewed sirens, IDF strikes began in the strip#Israel #Gaza pic.twitter.com/L4XzLLLIZO
— russia is a terrorist state (@ignis_fatum) January 27, 2023
The retaliatory strikes had been widely expected after Gazan terrorists fired two missiles toward the southern city of Ashkelon just before midnight. Both projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system, and no damage or injuries were caused.
There was no claim of responsibility for the Thursday night rockets, which came after Israeli officials expressed concerns about potential retaliation, including in the form of rocket fire from Gaza, over the deaths of nine Palestinians during an IDF raid against a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cell in the northern West Bank city of Jenin Thursday morning.
Both Islamic Jihad and Hamas threatened to hit back over the deaths.
Israel says it holds Hamas responsible for all violence emanating from the Strip and generally responds to rocket fire with airstrikes against the group regardless of who launched the attack.
Another clip appears to show Iron Dome interceptions over Ashkelon pic.twitter.com/ZOgG6Bu4Fo
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) January 26, 2023
According to Israeli officials, the IDF had foiled a “ticking time bomb” in Jenin on Thursday after receiving “accurate intelligence” from the Shin Bet security agency about the cell’s hideout apartment in the camp.
Nine Palestinians — including several members of the PIJ cell, other gunmen, and at least one uninvolved civilian — were killed, and another 20 were wounded in the clashes.
The clashes on Thursday morning marked the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank in years.
Separately on Thursday afternoon, a Palestinian man was killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the town of a-Ram, north of Jerusalem, the PA Health Ministry said. And in Gaza, a 13-year-old boy died of wounds sustained in the last major round of fighting between Israel and Gaza, in August 2022.
Tensions have recently soared in the West Bank as the IDF presses on with an anti-terror offensive mostly focused on the northern West Bank to deal with a series of attacks that have left 31 people in Israel dead in 2022.
Jenin is widely seen as a hotbed of terrorist activity, and has been the focus of many of the raids.
The IDF’s operation has netted more than 2,500 arrests in near-nightly raids. It also left 171 Palestinians dead in 2022, and, as of Thursday, another 30 since the beginning of the year, many of them while carrying out attacks or during clashes with security forces, though some were uninvolved civilians.
The last time a rocket was fired from the coastal enclave toward Israel was on January 3, following retaliation threats from Hamas over National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir paying a visit to the flashpoint Temple Mount site, which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The rocket failed to cross the border.
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