Israel strikes targets in Gaza

The Israeli military attacked targets in the Gaza Strip on Friday, as a response to a rocket recently launched from the Palestinian territory into Israel.

Gaza’s health ministry has not reported any casualties in the air attack, the first by Israel on Gaza since the 50-day war last summer.

Israel’s military said that one of its aircraft had targeted Hamas infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip, after a rocket fired by Hamas from Gaza earlier in the day fell on open ground in Ershol, causing no injuries.

2,140 Palestinans, most of them civilians, and 73 Israelis, most of them soldiers, were killed in last summer’s war. The war caused extensive damage to Gaza’s infrastructure and hundreds of residences. Although donors, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the European Union had pledged a combined total of $5.4 billion in various forms of assistance to Gaza two months ago, United Nations officials said that only $100 million has actually been transferred.

"That money will be largely finished in January 2015,” said Robert Turner, director of operations for the UN's Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. “We have a shortfall [for shelter and homes] of $620m and we are going to run out right in the hardest part of winter.”

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, on August 26. However, Egypt called off talks scheduled for November in Cairo between Israel and Hamas to strengthen their fragile truce.