GAZA – Israel said it struck targets in the Gaza Strip Monday after Palestinians fired rockets at southern Israel, in what they said was a response to an Israel air strike Sunday that wounded two fighters and eight bystanders. Sunday's Israeli air strike was aimed at two Palestinian fighters, one of whom was critically wounded. The armed wing of Hamas said it joined in Monday's rocket attack along with the Islamic Jihad group. Gaza has been under the control of Hamas since 2007. A Hamas spokesman said the movement would not remain passive in the face of what it called “one-sided” Israeli violence. Residents of Khan Younis in southern Gaza said an Israeli tank fired at the suspected launch area, slightly wounding four children and damaging a minaret and a water tower. Abu Ubaida, spokesman of the Hamas armed wing Izz El-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades, said the rocket firing was a message to Israel that it would not accept “a formula of a one-sided aggression by the occupation on flimsy pretexts”. With Egyptian mediation, Hamas has made efforts in the past to clamp down on smaller groups that persist in launching attacks on Israel, partly in order to avoid another devastating war. A three-week Israeli offensive killed over 1,000 Palestinians in the winter of 2008-2009. But on Monday Abu Ubaida said Hamas had displayed a “high level of coordination” with Islamic Jihad in launching the latest rocket barrage. “Should the enemy continue its aggression against the Gaza Strip the reaction by the resistance will be stronger and broader,” he said. The homemade weapons fired from Gaza are inaccurate, but potentially lethal. An Israeli spokeswoman said some exploded harmlessly Monday near the border with the Gaza Strip. “It was a very powerful barrage,” Ilan Yosef of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak near the Gaza border told Israel radio. – Reuters
