Israel hits Gaza ‘military site’ after rocket fire

OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: Israeli warplanes struck a weapons manufacturing facility in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the military said, after rocket fire against Israeli territory.

"A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck a military site in the central Gaza Strip belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation," a statement from the Israel Defence Forces said.

"The military site consists of an underground complex containing raw materials used for the manufacturing of rockets," it said, describing the facility as "one of the most significant" of its kind in the territory.

"The strike on this site will significantly impede and undermine Hamas’ force-building capabilities," it said, adding that Israel was responding to "attacks from the Gaza Strip on Israeli territory".

During the night there had been two separate launches, each of two rockets, towards Israeli territory, the military said.

Warning sirens alerting residents to the rocket fire had sounded during the night in the city of Ashkelon and elsewhere in Israel’s south.

Israel’s military said one of the rockets had been intercepted while the other three fell on empty land.

Impoverished Gaza, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, has been under Israeli blockade since 2007 when the Islamist movement Hamas seized power.

Before flying to Saudi Arabia on Friday, Biden visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank where he reiterated his administration’s commitment to a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There "must be a political horizon that the Palestinian people can actually see", Biden said.

"I know that the goal of the two states seems so far away," he said in Bethlehem, alongside Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas. Abbas said "recognising the state of Palestine" is the key to peace.