Israel jets said to strike Gaza, in response to Hamas mortar fire

Israeli officials on Wednesday warned Hamas to cease firing mortars at IDF troops on the border with the Gaza Strip or face a strong response from the army. Soon after Israeli jets were reported to have fired on targets in southern Gaza.

The officials conveyed the warning to the Palestinian Islamist terror group through intermediaries, the Walla news site reported.

“We responded firmly, and we also conveyed stern messages to them,” senior defense officials told Ynet.

Israel’s warning came following six instances of cross-border fire from the Gaza Strip in the past day, including five mortars fired at Israeli troops near the border. The soldiers responded with tank fire, with at least one shell reportedly striking a power station in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya. Another report said a shell struck a house in Gaza City as well.

Shortly thereafter, Palestinian media in the Gaza Strip reported Israeli planes carrying out several bombing runs striking targets near the southern city of Rafah. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The IDF had no immediate comment on the reported airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

Earlier Wednesday, following the initial cross-border exchanges, Hamas evacuated schools and headquarters in Gaza City.

The IDF also banned farmers from working along the border following Wednesday’s incidents.

The military confirmed Wednesday that it was operating to locate Hamas attack tunnels burrowed beneath the border with southern Israel. Last month, the IDF located and destroyed a Hamas tunnel near the Kerem Shalom crossing. The IDF believes the new attacks on troops on the border — including gunfire at engineering corps machinery operating near the fence — mark a bid by Hamas to prevent the army from locating and destroying tunnels the group has dug since summer 2014.

Israel’s Channel 10 indicated that the new flare-up at the border may have begun because Israel discovered “a tunnel or something.” Hamas has been digging attack tunnels toward, and possibly into Israel, rehabilitating and expanding the attack tunnel network destroyed by Israel in the 2014 war.

Israel is determined to keep hunting down all the Hamas tunnels, and Hamas has the dilemma now of using them to attack Israel or risk Israel finding them, the TV report said. It added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently that Israel had used new technology to uncover the Hamas tunnel dug into Israel last month, and that Hamas is worried that Israeli technology might indeed render its prized tunnel network vulnerable.

Two weeks ago, in a Times of Israel analysis piece, Avi Issacharoff highlighted the dilemmas as follows: “Israel faces no simple dilemma in grappling with the tunnel problem because, plainly, tackling the tunnels at root requires activity on the Palestinian side of the Gaza border and perhaps a wider solution regarding Hamas. For Hamas, the dilemmas are just beginning. What will it do if it establishes that the various hints in the Israeli media about improved technology enabling tunnel detection turn out to be true, and its network of tunnels is known to Israel? Will it maintain its current policy of restraint, keeping things quiet? Or, to the contrary, might it move into accelerated action because it fears that this prized strategic asset, this network of terror tunnels, may be about to topple domino-style — exposed and destroyed by Israel?”