GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s jets targeted the Gaza Strip overnight on Friday in the latest attack that breaches a ceasefire that ended May’s attacks.
The regime said the warplanes struck a site reportedly belonging to the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in a heavy-handed response to alleged incendiary device-laden balloons flown towards the occupied territories from the enclave.
“The strike was carried out in response to the arson balloon attacks,” the occupying regime’s military said on its Twitter page.
There was no immediate indication as to which Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas was responsible for the balloon launch, but the Zionist regime holds Hamas responsible for any action.
It was the third time the regime has carried out air attacks in Gaza since the end of the 11-day offensive it launched in the blockaded territory in May this year.
In May, the regime launched its fourth full-scale war against the already impoverished territory blockaded by the Zionist regime.
The war killed more than 250 Palestinians, but the regime was forced to put out a desperate call for a ceasefire after Gaza’s resistance groups targeted the occupied territories with more than 4,000 rockets.
The attack shows that the regime’s new officials have even ramped up their violence against the coastal territory compared to the previous ruling coalition of premier Benjamin Netanyahu, “which did not always respond to arson balloon attacks with airstrikes.”
Hamas has, however, strongly warned the regime on many occasions against testing its firepower. It has reminded it how the resistance’s rockets reached surprising distances during its latest successful defensive operation against the war.
The defensive campaign, known as the Operation Sword of al-Quds, saw Hamas’ projectiles fly as far as the holy occupied city of al-Quds and Tel Aviv itself as well as even northern-lying cities such as Haifa and Nazareth.
The movement has, accordingly, asserted that it has many means at its disposal to contain the regime’s aggression.
Hamas says the Zionist regime’s overnight bombing of the besieged strip is just a “showy” action and will not undermine the Palestinians’ determination to fight for the their rights against the occupation.
Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for the Gaza-based resistance movement, made the remarks in a statement on Friday after the regime violated the ceasefire.
“This will not affect the insistence of our people and their valiant resistance to continue the struggle by all means to fight for their rights and end their suffering,” Barhoum was quoted by the Arabic-language Palestinian Safa news agency as saying in the statement.
“The Zionist enemy’s bombing of the site in Gaza is nothing but a showy reaction to appease its settlers and cover up its escalating crises,” he added.
The Gaza Strip has been under a Zionist-Egyptian blockade since 2007. At least two million people – half of them under the age of 18 – live in the territory, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, in dire humanitarian conditions.