Gaza City, August 12 (RHC)-- The Israeli military has carried out overnight airstrikes and artillery attacks on several parts of the besieged Gaza Strip, with no immediate reports of casualties.

Israeli forces conducted attacks on at least three sites in the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, with Palestinian sources saying the occupying regime’s aircraft had also fired missiles at positions in al-Nahda neighborhood, near the international airport in the southern city of Rafah.

The English-language Times of Israel online newspaper and the Jerusalem Post daily paper claimed that the Israeli artillery had targeted a military base, underground infrastructure and observation posts belonging to the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement in central Gaza.

Israel claimed that the strikes were in response to the launching of incendiary balloons from Gaza over the past several days, which it blames on Hamas.  

The Israeli regime every so often launches strikes against positions in the blockaded enclave, accusing the resistance groups there of launching rockets.

Israel has also launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.

The crippling blockade has caused a decline in the standard of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty in the Gaza Strip.