Gaza terrorists fired dozens of rockets into Israel on Saturday, drawing a wave of Israeli airstrikes, as hostilities flared across the border for a second day.
Across the border, rocket sirens sent Israelis running to shelters, and the Magen David Adom ambulance service said one woman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in the city of Kiryat Gat. Many of the missiles were intercepted, the military said.
The escalation began on Friday when two Israeli soldiers were wounded by Gaza gunfire near the border. A retaliatory Israeli airstrike killed two members of the Islamist Hamas group that governs Gaza.
On Saturday, Israel hit Gaza with airstrikes and tank fire after Palestinians fired about 150 rockets toward Israeli cities and villages.
The Israeli military said its forces had carried out attacks against more than 30 targets belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
A small armed pro-Hamas group in Gaza, The Protectors of Al-Aqsa, said one of its men was killed in an airstrike on Saturday.
The Gaza Health Ministry said six Palestinians were wounded.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said it was evacuating schools in areas under Israeli bombardment.
The flare-up, which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene his Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, comes days before Muslims begin the holy month of Ramadan and Israelis celebrate Independence Day.
Israel is also due to host the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest finals in less than two weeks in Tel Aviv, toward which long-range rockets were launched in mid-March.
Although Israeli airstrikes in retaliation for rockets from Gaza are a frequent occurrence, Israel and Hamas have managed to avert all-out war for the past five years.
Egyptian mediators, credited with brokering a cease-fire after a Hamas rocket attack north of Tel Aviv in March triggered a burst of intense fighting, have been working to prevent any further escalation of hostilities.
Netanyahu will meet security chiefs on Saturday to discuss the situation, a source in his office said.
Hamas would "continue to respond to the crimes by the occupation and it will not allow it to shed the blood of our people," its spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said in a statement on Saturday. He made no explicit claim for Hamas having fired the rockets.
One of the attacks was claimed by the Palestinian Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which said it fired rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
The Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the rocket barrages were a response to Friday's events and that Israel has been delaying the implementation of previous understandings brokered by Cairo.
Hamas said on Thursday that its Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, had traveled to Cairo for talks on efforts to maintain calm along the border and alleviate hardship in the enclave.
