2 killed, including infant, several injured as IDF unleash retaliatory strikes on Gaza - officials

“Four Palestinians have been injured in an Israeli airstrike around the town of Beit Hanoun in the north of the Gaza Strip,”Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson for Palestine’s health ministry, was quoted by RIA Novosti.

Later in the day, the health ministry reported that the Israeli strikes had killed two people in Gaza: a 22-year-old man and a one-year-old baby.

Meanwhile on the Israeli side of the border, an 80-year-old woman was severely wounded in a Palestinian strike on the city of Kiryat Gat, and is in "serious condition," Haaretz reported. Another 49-year-old man in Ashkelon was moderately wounded.

The Israeli armed forces said on Saturday that as many as 200 rockets were fired from inside Gaza Strip into Israel. Dozens of them were intercepted by Iron Dome missile defense system. 

Israel's military has blamed the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas militant groups for the rocket attack. Israel responded shortly after the attack, with the air force hitting rocket launchers in Gaza and tanks opening fire at Hamas outposts.

Israel's military has also destroyed "terror tunnels" that it says Islamic Jihad fighters were using to cross into Israeli territory. 

Violence resumed in Gaza this week after two Israeli troops were shot and injured while on patrol along the border in Gaza, triggering IDF retaliatory airstrikes. At least four Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded, including 10 children, three paramedics and a journalist. In the midst of the escalation, Hamas vowed tit-for-tat response.

The latest unrest in Gaza comes on the back of massive protests, dubbed the ‘Great March of Return’, which intensified last May after the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The protests saw repeated clashes between the IDF and Palestinian protesters, which at times escalated to armed confrontation.

More than 190 Palestinians, including 41 children, were killed by Israeli forces in just one year since March 2018, the UN estimated. Almost 29,000 civilians were injured, around 25 percent wounded by live Israeli ammunition.