GAZA (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Tuesday denied the Zionist regime’s accusations that it was responsible for launching a rocket against the regime.
Khader Habib, leader of Islamic Jihad, told Xinhua that the occupying regime has been inciting his group for some time, accusing it of attempting to escalate the situation in the Gaza Strip.
What the regime said is "false and baseless accusations, and Islamic Jihad is part of the national consensus in the Gaza Strip," Habib said.
The leader of the Islamic Jihad accused the regime of shifting attention from its siege on the Gaza Strip.
Earlier in the day, the Zionist regime announced a further reduction of the fishing zone for Gaza to six nautical miles.
Avichai Adarei, Zionist army spokesman, claimed the Israeli move was a response to the launch of a rocket from the Gaza Strip toward the occupied territories on Monday.
Adarei accused Islamic Jihad of being behind the shelling that landed in an uninhabited area of the city of Ashdod without causing injury or damage.
The Zionist regime reduced the offshore fishing restriction it imposes for vessels off the Gaza shore under the pretext of the alleged rocket fire from the blockaded coastal enclave.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit in the regime’s war ministry that oversees civil matters in the Palestinian territories, announced on Tuesday that Tel Aviv had scaled back Gaza’s permitted fishing zone from 15 nautical miles to six "until further notice.”
A COGAT spokeswoman said that the decision was taken following what it called a rocket launch from Gaza late on Monday.
The Tel Aviv regime extended the fishing limit to 15 nautical miles in some areas from April 1 as part of a package of measures meant to reduce a flare-up of violence with the Hamas resistance movement ahead of the April 9 Israeli general election.

Fishermen arrive with their catch at the seafront of Gaza City, in the Palestinian enclave, on April 2, 2019.