"We just concluded a significant aerial strike where we struck more than 30 different military targets, Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters on Tuesday.
"Amongst those a tunnel and different components of military infrastructure belonging to Hamas and to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," he added.
Conricus said the attacks came in response to a barrage of rockets and mortar shells against southern Israel from Gaza earlier on Tuesday, describing the confrontation between the two sides as the most extensive since the 2014 war on Gaza.
The mortar attacks from Gaza came a day after Israeli tank fire killed a young Palestinian man and injured another in the southern part of the Gaza Strip as the Tel Aviv regime presses ahead with its acts of aggression against the coastal sliver.
Hamas defended mortar attacks on Israel, saying, "What the resistance carried out this morning comes within the framework of the natural right to defend our people."
Tensions have been running high along the Gaza fence since March 30, which marked the start of a series of protests, dubbed The Great March of Return, demanding the right to return for those driven out of their homeland.
The Gaza clashes reached their peak on May 14, the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Nakba Day (the Day of Catastrophe), which coincided this year with the US embassy relocation from Tel Aviv to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds. Apart from enforcing its blockade, Israel has launched several wars on the Gaza Strip, the last of which began in early July 2014.
The military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians. Over 11,100 others were wounded.
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