Israel carried out airstrikes on the Gaza Strip on the night of Thursday, February 2, hours after intercepting a rocket fired from this Palestinian territory, according to AFP journalists and witnesses.
Several new Palestinian rockets were fired after these strikes, and around 03:15 (01:15 GMT), further explosions and the sound of aircraft were heard from Gaza City, where a strong wind was blowing.
In a statement issued at 02:41 (00:41 GMT), the Israeli army confirmed that it was
“in the process of striking the Gaza Strip”
.
According to local security sources and witnesses, the first strikes (at least seven) hit a training center of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in the al-Maghazi refugee camp ( central Gaza Strip).
An AFP reporter saw two more rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip after the strikes, and witnesses spoke of several more rockets fired from various locations in this 2.3 million-mile micro-territory. residents under Israeli blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Palestinian armed group, claimed to have carried out "a barrage of rockets [...] in response to the Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip" among other things.
On the Israeli side, the warning sirens sounded in Sderot, a city in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip, according to the army.