JERUSALEM (AFP) — The Israeli military said Sunday that it had struck more than 100 “terror targets” in the Gaza Strip over the past two days and intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.
Several of the strikes targeted sites from which Palestinian militants had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.
Gaza’s civil defense agency reported that on Saturday more than 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes.
Last week, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned of intensified Israeli strikes if the incoming rocket fire continued.
The renewed fire from Gaza has triggered air raid sirens in Israeli communities that were largely destroyed during Hamas’ October 2023 attack.
Though less frequent than in the early days of the nearly 15-month-long war, there has been a recent spate of launches by militants in the devastated Palestinian territory.
The latest violence in Gaza comes as indirect negotiations for a hostage release deal and ceasefire had resumed in Qatar.
Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged for months in efforts to strike a deal to end the war and secure the release of dozens of hostages still held in Gaza.
Meanwhile, sirens sounded in Talmei Elazar before a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted before it crossed into Israeli territory, the military said in a statement posted to Telegram.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who control much of northern Yemen including the capital Sanaa, said in a statement Sunday they had launched “a hypersonic ballistic missile” targeting a power station south of the Israeli city of Haifa.
Meanwhile, the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, released a video on Saturday of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since its October 2023 attack.
In the undated, three-and-a-half-minute video recording that Agence France-Presse has not been able to verify, 19-year-old soldier Liri Albag called in Hebrew for the Israeli government to secure her release.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group for relatives of those abducted, said Albag’s family has not authorized publication of the video.
“We appeal to the prime minister, world leaders and all decision-makers: it’s time to take decisions as if it were your own children there,” the family said in a statement.
Albag was 18 when she was captured by Palestinian militants at the Nahal Oz base on the Gaza border along with six other women conscripts, five of whom remain in captivity.
Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have released a number of videos of Israeli hostages in their custody during nearly 15 months of fighting in Gaza.
The militants seized 251 hostages during the 2023 attack, of whom 96 remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.