Smoke rises above buildings in Gaza City as Israel launched air strikes on the Palestinian enclave early on 2 February, 2023. AFP

Gaza City: Israel on Thursday confirmed air strikes on the central Gaza Strip hours after intercepting a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory.

In a tweet Israel Defense Forces (IDF) mentioned, “In response to the rocket launch from Gaza into Israel earlier today, IDF fighter jets struck a production site for raw chemical material production, along with a weapon manufacturing site belonging to the Hamas Terrorist Organization.”

“The IDF holds Hamas responsible for all terrorism activity emanating from Gaza and it will face the consequences of the security violations against Israel,” IDF mentioned in one other tweet.

New rounds of rockets have been fired from Gaza after these strikes, and recent explosions could possibly be heard from Gaza City at round 3:15 am (0115 GMT).

According to native safety sources and witnesses, the primary strikes – no less than seven – hit a coaching centre of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist motion Hamas. The centre is situated within the Al-Maghazi refugee camp within the central Gaza Strip.

A second spherical of air strikes by the Israeli military focused the al-Qassam Brigades’ coaching centre southwest of Gaza City, in keeping with native safety sources.

After the primary air strike, an AFP reporter noticed two extra rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, and witnesses mentioned a number of extra rockets have been fired from numerous areas.

Gaza, densely populated with 2.Three million individuals, has been beneath an Israeli blockade since Hamas took energy 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”.

On the Israeli aspect, warning sirens sounded in Sderot, a city in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip, in keeping with the military.

With inputs from businesses

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