KHAN YUNIS: A fireball rises following an air strike in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, late on September 6, 2021. - AFP

GAZA: Zionists launched airstrikes against Gaza on Monday night, the army said, retaliating after incendiary balloons launched from the blockaded Palestinian enclave had started fires. Blaming Hamas for the balloons, the Zionist army said it had targeted locations belonging to the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. "Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck a Hamas rocket manufacturing workshop, as well as a Hamas military compound in Khan Yunis," the Zionist army said in a statement.

"The strikes were in response to Hamas launching incendiary balloons into Zionist territory," the statement added. Witnesses said that the army had also fired artillery at the north of Gaza. According to medical sources in the Palestinian enclave, no one was killed. Earlier in the day, Zionist firefighters had said that incendiary balloons had caused three bushfires at sites close to the Gaza Strip. Launching the makeshift devices is a common tactic of militants in Gaza, which Zionists has blockaded for nearly 15 years.

Zionists frequently responds with airstrikes. Monday's strikes come after six Palestinians broke out of an Zionist prison earlier in the day through a tunnel, triggering a massive manhunt. Hamas and Zionists fought a devastating 11-day conflict in May, the worst between the two sides in years. Though it ended with an Egypt-brokered ceasefire and a pledge for Qatari aid to ease poverty in the Palestinian enclave, incendiary balloons and occasional border clashes have continued in the months since. - AFP