The Israeli army announced on Friday, September 22, that it had launched three strikes on the Gaza Strip, after violence occurred during a rally at the border during which twenty-eight Palestinians were injured by Israeli fire, according to the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip.
A “drone struck two military posts belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization adjacent to areas where a violent riot was taking place and from where incendiary balloons had been launched,” the Israeli army said in a statement. A tank fired on a third Hamas military post, located next to the area from where, according to the army, shots were fired against Israeli forces acting against the “riot.”
A security source in the Gaza Strip told Agence France-Presse (AFP), on condition of anonymity, “that at least two Israeli strikes hit Hamas military sites east of the city of Gaza.” No injuries were reported in the strikes.
These strikes, carried out at the end of the afternoon, come against a backdrop of almost daily violence for around ten days between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli forces, on both sides of the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, a territory controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas.
Earlier in the day, clashes broke out between Palestinian demonstrators throwing stones at Israeli forces stationed across the border in the Gaza Strip, an AFP journalist noted.
The figure of 28 Palestinians injured in the clashes brings to 88 the number injured since the start of border violence earlier this month, during which six Palestinians were killed.
The Gaza Strip, a poor and cramped Palestinian territory, has been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007. In recent years, numerous wars have pitted Palestinian fighters against Israeli forces.
In May, Israel and Palestinian armed groups clashed with airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and rockets fired toward Israeli soil. This violence cost the lives of 34 Palestinians and one Israeli woman.
