The Israeli military hit multiple Hamas targets located in the Gaza Strip in the second decisive action on Sunday after an earlier counterattack on Saturday. The Israelis were hitting Hamas in response to a bomb detonation that wounded 4 IDF soldiers and rockets, fired from Gaza which landed in Israeli territory.

The Israeli Army in a statement said the rockets hit a residential building but no one was seriously hurt.

The military said that eight of the targets it attacked were located in a Hamas military compound, where the group stores weapon, manufacturing infrastructures and carries out training.

Earlier, the army said it struck six Hamas targets in Gaza in what it described as a “large-scale attack.” The military said the targets included a Hamas attack tunnel reaching from Gaza into Israeli territory and two military compounds.

Earlier on Saturday, four Israeli soldiers were wounded – two seriously and two others moderately – when a device exploded near the troops at the fence bordering the southern Gaza Strip. The wounded soldiers were evacuated to Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva with burns and shrapnel injuries.

According to the IDF, the incident unfolded when soldiers from the Golani Brigade and the Engineering Corps approached the border fence after noticing a Palestinian flag hung in its vicinity. After the soldiers approached the flag, the device exploded. Two tunnels originating in the Strip and extending into Israeli territory were found in the past near the site.

The military believes that the Popular Resistance Committee in Gaza, an umbrella group made up of militants from different armed factions, hung the flag there during Friday’s demonstration in order to attract the soldiers. The committee described the explosion as “a heroic act in response to the enemy’s infiltration into the Gaza Strip.”

With the increased Iranian presence along the border and the Israeli air strikes on their command and control facilities, the ante is going to be upped along the strip as well as with the border to Lebanon.

To read the entire article from Haaretz,  click here:

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