Explosions lit up the night sky over Gaza as Israeli fighter jets and attack helicopters bombed several locations inside the Palestinian enclave. Tel Aviv said the strike was a reprisal for a rocket fired into Israel earlier.
Reports of the bombing came shortly after 1am local time on Friday, with eyewitnesses sharing alleged videos of explosions and claiming F-16 fighters were attacking.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the bombing and said it was in “response to the rocket fired from Gaza at Israel earlier tonight.”
Fighter jets and helicopters struck “a Hamas weapons manufacturing site, a weapon smuggling tunnel and a military post,” the IDF said on Twitter.
The rocket the IDF was referencing came from the direction of the Gaza Strip on Thursday evening – as Israel was celebrating its independence day – and struck uninhabited territory near the town of Sderot in southern Israel.
While Tel Aviv blamed the attack on Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the several militant groups operating out of the enclave, the reprisal was aimed at Hamas in line with the Israeli policy of holding that group responsible for anything that happens in the Gaza Strip.
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