Israeli jets hit Gaza "after rocket fire into Israel"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israeli warplanes have attacked several Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip following a Palestinian rocket attack in the south of Israel, the military has said, according to Al Jazeera.

The incident comes after Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire on Thursday, June 13 in the first serious cross-border escalation since a surge in fighting in May.

In a statement on Friday, the Israeli military said fighter jets struck "infrastructure in military compounds and a Hamas naval force military compound as part of a strike on a number of Hamas terror sites throughout the Gaza Strip".

The statement said the attack came in response to a rocket launched from Gaza which hit a Jewish seminary in the town of Sderot.

The seminary was empty at the time of the attack as students had left to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath with their families.

"If the rocket had hit a few hours earlier there would have been a disaster," former Defence Minister Amir Peretz, a Sderot resident, said in an interview with Israeli public radio on Friday.

No casualties were reported on any side.