Israel attacks military targets in Gaza after Palestinian mortar attack

The Israeli army held two new attacks on military targets in Gaza on Thursday in response to several rounds of mortar projectiles from the strip against an Israeli military outpost. This incident occurs just a month after the Israeli-led attack on a tunnel in which 12 militiamen died. The two new bombings took place at the center of the enclave and joined four more hours ago against two military infrastructures of Hamas and two other Islamic Jihad, in which three wounded were produced, according to medical sources in the Gaza Strip. The attacks were in response to mortar gunfire against a border military outpost, which also did not cause casualties, and take place at a time of crisis in the transfer of power in Gaza from the Hamas Islamist movement to the Government of the National Authority Palestine (ANP), scheduled for tomorrow and postponed until next day 10 by disagreements between the political factions. Around 14.00 hours, "between ten and twelve barrages of mortar were shot into the northeastern part of the Gaza Strip, without causing injuries and only small damage." In response, the Israeli army counterattacked, the military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, explained in a telephone press conference in which he addressed the increase in tension. "It is a grave act." We know exactly who has carried out the attack, even by name, said the spokesman, who did not revealed the authorship and insisted that Israel "makes Hamas responsible for any hostile activity from the fringe." "We watch every move," warned the military, who assured that Israel does not "attempt to aggravate the situation" but "is prepared" and stressed that any subsequent steps "will be the result of actions taken by Hamas or Islamic Jihad." Israel-like the US or the European Union-considers Hamas a terrorist organization and keeps Gaza under lockdown since the Islamists seized power by force and expelled the loyal forces to the Palestinian president, Mahmud Abbas (leader of the movement (nationalist Fatah), in June 2007. The confrontation ushered in the political division to which the factions now seek to put an end to a difficult process of reconciliation driven by Egypt that in the last days seems stagnant. Today's surge in tension takes place one month after an Israeli attack on an Islamic Jihad tunnel connecting Gaza with Israel and twelve militiamen were killed.