Israel's military says it has carried out strikes across the Gaza Strip after armed Palestinians attacked Israeli soldiers earlier in the week.
The strikes on Thursday targeted commanders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), according to a statement by the Israel Defence Forces.
This was a response to a "flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement" by "armed terrorists" two days earlier, when soldiers were shot at in an Israeli-controlled part of the southern city of Rafah, it said.
The statement did not provide any information on possible casualties in the Israel response.
Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip said at least nine people were killed in the evening attacks, including a Hamas commander and another from the armed wing of the PIJ.
Several injuries were also reported.
There have been repeated deadly incidents in the sealed-off coastal area following the ceasefire last October.
However, large-scale Israeli attacks like those on Thursday have been rare since then.
Israeli forces have generally resumed the ceasefire after launching attacks in response to such incidents.
On this occasion too, residents said the strikes had ceased again.
At the same time, the IDF statement said Israeli forces will continue to view any violation of the agreement "with utmost seriousness" and will continue to take action in response.
The US this week announced the transition to the second phase of the Gaza Strip peace plan, even though there is still a dead hostage in the enclave that Hamas should have already handed over.
The US justified the launch of the next phase of the agreement by saying that the ceasefire had held so far.
A Palestinian committee set to govern the Gaza Strip under US supervision met for the first time Friday in Cairo as its leader pledged to get to work quickly to improve conditions there.
Ali Shaath, an engineer and former Palestinian Authority official from Gaza, expects reconstruction and recovery to take about three years.
He plans to focus first on immediate needs, including shelter.
"The Palestinian people were looking forward to this committee, its establishment and its work to rescue them," Shaath said after the meeting, in a television interview with Egypt’s state-owned al-Qahera News.
The committee will run day-to-day affairs in the Gaza Strip, under the oversight of a US President Donald Trump-led "Board of Peace,” whose members have not yet been named.
with AP
