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At least five Palestinians, including a 1-year-old child, were killed Saturday as Israel responded with force to the firing of 200 rockets earlier from Gaza into southern Israel, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Air-raid sirens sounded across southern Israel as the rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, according to the Israel Defense Forces, sending residents running for bomb shelters.
Israel Police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld said there were heightened security measures in the south and increased patrols in cities after the wave of rockets. He said police bomb disposal experts were responding to rockets that have struck open areas in the south.
Rosenfeld said a house was damaged by a rocket in the town of Ashkelon, not far from the border with Gaza, but its occupants were safe.
MDA, Israel's emergency medical service, said a 50-year-old man was treated for shrapnel wounds after getting injured in one of the town streets.
It also said a 50-year-old woman was "severely injured" in a nearby town of Kiryat Gat after suffering shrapnel wounds.
The IDF said on Twitter that its tanks had begun to strike Hamas military targets. It said later Saturday that it has struck approximately 30 targets along the Gaza Strip.
Saturday's missile barrage comes after the IDF said that shots were fired at Israeli troops from southern Gaza on Friday, injuring two soldiers.
In response, an IDF aircraft targeted a military post of Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled over the territory since 2007. Hamas said that two of its members were killed and three were wounded in that strike.
Hamas would "continue to respond to the crimes by the occupation and it will not allow it to shed the blood of our people," its spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said in a statement on Saturday. He made no explicit claim for Hamas having fired the rockets.
Reuters quoted a source in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying he will convene security chiefs on Saturday to discuss the situation.
Israel and Hamas have managed to avert all-out war for the past five years. Egyptian mediators, credited with brokering a ceasefire after a Hamas rocket attack north of Tel Aviv in March triggered a burst of intense fighting, have been working to prevent any further escalation of hostilities.
Gaza, which is home to around two million Palestinians, has seen its economy suffer after years of blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts. Unemployment stands at 52 percent, according to the World Bank.
Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel in the past decade.
