GAZA, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Israeli war jets struck Hamas naval forces military targets with six missiles on Friday night west of the central Gaza Strip city of Deir el Ballah, Hamas security officials said.
Residents of the western area of central Gaza Strip said they heard a series of big explosions, which were a result of the Israeli airstrike on Hamas facilities.
Medical sources said no injuries were reported.
Israeli army on Friday night fired two missiles at a Hamas post close to the fishermen harbor in western Gaza city, destroying a building and two military vessels, Hamas interior ministry said in a statement.
The statement said that the building and two boats, severely damaged, belong to Hamas naval police.
An Israeli army spokesman said in a statement published in the Israeli media and sent to reporters that the Israeli army air forces targeted military facilities that belong to Hamas movement in western Gaza Strip.
The spokesman said the airstrikes on Hamas movement's posts in the Gaza Strip were a response to the earlier attempt of cutting the barbed wire of the border fence and infiltrating the Gazan-Israeli border.
The Israeli airstrikes on Gaza came as tension between Israel and the Palestinians has been mounting in the coastal enclave since March 30, the start of anti-Israeli rallies.
Daylong protests and clashes between hundreds of angry Palestinians and Israeli soldiers near the border in eastern Gaza Strip Friday had left three Palestinians killed and 883 wounded, medics said.
Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the health ministry in Gaza, said that 43 Palestinians were killed and 6,500 were wounded since the start of the rallies, besides another two Hamas militants killed in a tank shelling on eastern Gaza are held in the hands of the Israeli army.
The six-week protests dubbed the "Great March of Return" are expected to peak on May 15, the day after the 70th anniversary of Israel's declaration of independence but marked by the Palestinians as the Nakba Day, or "Day of the Catastrophe."
