Israeli warplanes and helicopters launch air raids in Gaza. (Photo: Press TV)

Gaza City, October 21 (RHC)-- Israeli warplanes and helicopters have carried out fresh strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, targeting farmlands in the coastal enclave.  Palestinian media reported that the Israeli airstrikes targeted farmlands in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah late on Tuesday.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the attacks.  The English-language Times of Israel online newspaper and the Jerusalem Post daily paper claimed that the Israeli artillery had targeted an "underground facility" belonging to the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement in the southern Gaza Strip.

Rocket sirens were reportedly activated in several towns surrounding the besieged enclave on Tuesday evening.  Israeli forces regularly carry out airstrikes on Gaza, citing Palestinian rocket attacks or flying of incendiary balloons from the blockaded territory.

Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards.  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.