Gazan infiltrators breach border, set fire to construction equipment

A group of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip breached the border fence Sunday and set fire to construction equipment inside Israel, before fleeing back to the coastal enclave, the army said.

The IDF said the assailants set shipping containers on fire that belong to civilian contractors working on the security fence, damaging Israeli “security infrastructure” near the border. The army said no Israeli soldiers were injured in the incident.

It was the third breach of the border in as many days.

On Saturday, the IDF said troops opened fire on Palestinians crossing into Israeli territory from Gaza, who were seeking to damage “security infrastructure” inside Israel, before fleeing back to the Strip.

On Friday, the army said an Israeli military vehicle came under fire during the weekly “March of Return” protests along the Gaza border, and that a Palestinian who breached the border fence in the northern part of the Strip had planted a grenade that exploded, but caused no injuries.

The incident on Sunday came as firefighters worked to put fires in three separate Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip that were sparked by incendiary kites and balloons flown over the border.

גדר המערכת בדרום רצועת עזה:
כוחותינו סיכלו ניסיון פגיעה בתשתיות ביטחוניות בשטח ישראל https://t.co/GusUI8MbX8 pic.twitter.com/84e7Q10Qa4

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) June 2, 2018

Firefighters worked with local residents to put out the blaze in the fields of the kibbutzim: Nir Am, Or Haner and Be’eri.

By evening, most of the fires were out, but extensive damage to crops were caused, adding to the devastation from previous days.

A blaze set off by Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border on Saturday afternoon devastated a nature reserve inside Israel, in what officials said was the worst day of fires since demonstrators in the Strip adopted the fire kite tactics in the last few months.

Some 2,000 to 3,000 dunams (500 to 740 acres) of fields and parts of a nature reserve adjacent to Kibbutz Carmia were destroyed. Officials at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority estimated that at least one third of the Carmia reserve had been destroyed.

In total, firefighters battled three large fires and several smaller ones along the Gaza Strip border on Saturday, all believed to have been started by incendiary kites flown from the coastal enclave, which have become almost daily occurrences, since the start of the “March of Return” protests along the border at the end of March.

During the protests, Gazans have flown into Israel hundreds of kites outfitted with Molotov cocktails and containers of burning fuel, setting fire to large swaths of land.

Officials said that since the start of the protests, the kites have set over 270 fires, destroying some 25,000 dunam (6,200 acres), or more than a third of all the land adjacent to the Strip.

Military planners have begun implementing new measures to combat the assaults, including options drawn from the IDF’s responses to rocket launches and other terror attacks. The IDF has also used drones to try and take down the kites.