Israeli aircraft bombed a multi-storey building in Gaza City on Thursday, local residents said, a few hours after Palestinian militants fired a long-range rocket at Israel's largest southern city.
Israeli aircraft bombed a multi-storey building in Gaza City on Thursday, local residents said, a few hours after Palestinian militants fired a long-range rocket at Israel's largest southern city.
At least four people were hurt in the air strike, health officials said. An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment. The explosion shook buildings in Gaza City as dust and grey smoke filled the air, a Reuters witness said.
A long-range rocket fired from Gaza struck an uninhabited area outside the largest city in southern Israel on Thursday, Israeli police said, hours after a Palestinian official said an end to a surge in cross-border fighting could be near.
Israeli Army Radio said the rocket was a long-range Grad capable of reaching Israel's heartland. Police said they found the remnants in an open area on the outskirts of the city of Beersheba and that no one was hurt.
It was a show of force and defiance by Palestinian militants ahead of a meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, where terms for a possible truce were likely to be on the agenda.
Gaza has been controlled by the Islamist group Hamas for more than a decade, a period that has seen three wars between Israel and the Palestinian enclave. Four months of confrontation this year have raised the risk of another all-out conflict, with the situation oscillating between violent clashes and cautious talk of peace.
Rocket alert sirens sounded in Beersheba, a city of 200,000 inhabitants some 40 km (25 miles) from the Gaza Strip, for the first time since the last war in 2014.
Hours earlier, a Palestinian official said armed factions in Gaza were prepared to halt a round of rocket attacks on southern Israel - where communities near the border had been targeted - if the Israeli military stopped its air strikes after two days of violence.
Ambulance sirens echoed through the night in Gaza, where families huddled at home as powerful explosions shook buildings. The Israeli military said its aircraft struck more than 150 facilities belonging to Hamas.
A pregnant Palestinian woman and her 18-month-old child, and a militant from the Islamist Hamas group that rules Gaza, were killed in the Israeli attacks, and at least five civilians were wounded, local medical officials said.
Hundreds of people took part in the funeral for the woman and child.
The Israeli military said seven people were wounded in southern Israel. One was identified by her employer as a Thai agricultural worker.
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