Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip today, hours after a mortar shell fired by militants wounded an Israeli man at an agricultural community close to the border between the two territories, the army said.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strikes were aimed at three separate targets in the Gaza Strip, two of which militants confirmed were sites they used for training. No casualties were reported.
Militants fired about five mortar rounds late yesterday and fragments from one of them wounded one man. He was taken by helicopter to hospital in Beersheba, but his wounds were not life-threatening, the spokeswoman said.
He was the first casualty from shells fired by Gaza militants into Israel since March when an agricultural labourer from Thailand was killed when he was hit by a mortar shell.
Gaza militants in the coastal territory that is ruled by the Islamist Hamas faction occasionally launch cross-border rocket and mortar strikes at Israel that rarely cause casualties.
Israel uses tank fire or air strikes against militant targets and tunnels used to smuggle goods and arms into the blockaded territory from Egypt.
Israel ended 38 years of Gaza occupation in 2005 but it began blockading the strip in 2007 after Hamas Islamists hostile to the Jewish state seized power from Palestinians prepared to negotiate peace with Israel.
Reuters