Gaza Strip Comes Under Israeli Air Strikes

Israel has launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip, its first such attack since a ceasefire ended an eight-day war in November.

The Israeli military said the strikes, which targeted "two extensive terror sites in the Northern Gaza Strip", were in response to rocket fire from Gaza towards southern Israel.

Officials from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls the territory, said no one was hurt in the air strikes.  No damage was reported.

The air raids followed the third rocket attack to hit Israel since the ceasefire.

The Egyptian-mediated truce between Israel and Hamas has kept the frontier relatively quiet. Some 170 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed in the brief cross-border war.

A rocket launched from Gaza Strip fell close to Sderot

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the military would not sit back while Palestinian militants attack southern Israel.

"We will not in any way allow a routine of rocket fire steadily dripping on our civilians and soldiers," he said.

An al Qaeda-linked group, called Magles Shoura al Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for the rocket salvo, saying it was in response to the death of a Palestinian inmate in an Israeli jail.

Maysara Abu Hamdeya, 64, was serving a life sentence over an attempt to bomb an Israeli cafe. He died of cancer on Tuesday.

His death sparked some protests in the region, including in East Jerusalem and in the occupied West Bank, and the Palestinian territories were due to hold a general strike and day of mourning on Wednesday.

Palestinian Hamas militants hold a symbolic coffin of Maysara Abu Hamdeya

Palestinians in several jails banged on their cell doors and hurled objects after news spread of the death.

In the West Bank city of Hebron protesters threw firebombs and rocks at Israeli soldiers. The troops responded with tear gas.

Palestinian prisoner affairs minister Issa Karakeh blamed Israel, saying: "This is a serious, ugly crime committed against the prisoner Maysara due to medical negligence and reluctance to release him."

Israeli Prisons Authority spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Abu Hamdiyeh had been treated well by Israeli specialists and had died in a hospital.

Ms Weizman said the prison service asked the parole board for the prisoner's early release after his cancer was diagnosed as terminal last week, but the appeal was still being processed at the time of his death.

US President Barack Obama visited the region last month

Israel said it holds Hamas responsible for any violence emanating from Gaza.

Along with the US and most Western governments, Israel views Hamas as a terrorist group for its refusal to recognise the Jewish state or to renounce violence that included suicide bombings in a Palestinian uprising a decade ago.

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