Hamas security forces also reported Saturday’s strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli air force struck two “smuggling tunnels” on the southern Gaza border and one “weaponry storage site” in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

“In all strikes, a hit was identified,” the spokesman said, adding that the strikes were in response to six rockets targeting Israeli since Saturday morning.

According to the Israeli military, more than 100 rockets, mortar shells and missiles have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza since Hamas leaders announced a cease-fire on January 18.

Israel also announced a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of Gaza in January, ending a three-week military campaign that the Israeli military said was aimed at halting the rocket fire.

Egypt has been trying to broker a broader cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israel is demanding that Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit before it fully reopens the border crossings with Gaza.

Hamas has rejected discussing Shalit’s release as part of any cease-fire negotiation.

Israel launches airstrikes into Gaza

An air strike in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Thursday killed three militants and wounded two others, medics said.

An army spokesman said the raid targeted a group who had fired an anti-tank shell at an army unit on the Israeli side of the border.

Late Wednesday, an Israeli air raid killed a senior Islamic Jihad military commander as he drove through the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City.

Israel launched four strikes on the Gaza Strip Thursday evening in response to rockets and mortar shells being fired, a military spokesman said.

“Our aircraft struck four tunnels dug under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, close to Rafah,” he told AFP.

“In all eight rockets and two mortar shells have been fired at Israel on Thursday.”

In a statement published in Gaza, the Al-Quds Brigade, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Thursday claimed responsibility for 10 rocket attacks on Israel.

No casualties were reported from the rockets in Israel, according to the Israeli army and medical services.

It was the latest blow to the tenuous ceasefire Hamas and Israel declared on January 18 to end Israel’s 22-day devastating war on the tiny coastal strip. Egypt has been brokering talks to turn the ceasefires into a durable truce but has so far failed to clinch any agreement.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned of tough action to try to stamp out the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

The latest violence erupted just hours after Clinton left Israel on Wednesday after wrapping up her first trip to the Middle East since being appointed by US President Barack Obama.

“The United States aims to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised,” she said after talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the occupied West Bank. “Time is of the essence.”

She called for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, which was devastated by the war that Israel launched on December 27 in response to rocket fire and that ended up killing more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

Israel sealed the impoverished territory to all but humanitarian goods in June 2007 when Hamas, an Islamist group pledged to Israel’s destruction, seized power in the enclave booting out forces loyal to moderate Abbas.

“We have obviously expressed concerns about the border crossings. We want humanitarian aid to get into Gaza in sufficient amounts to alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza,” Clinton said.

Gaza is one of the world’s most densely-populated places. More than half of the 1.4 million population is under 18 and the vast majority of residents depend on foreign aid.

Clinton slammed Israel’s plans to raze houses in east Jerusalem that were built without building permits, notoriously difficult to obtain for the city’s Palestinian residents.

“Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap,” Clinton said, referring to a blueprint for peace talks adopted by the international community in 2003.

Israeli raids kill Gaza militants after Clinton visit

The raids targeted one of the positions of the rebel Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR, said Oliver Hamuli, the spokesman for the military operation.

The group is made up primarily of ethnic Hutus from Rwanda who fled across the border into Congo following the 1994 slaughter of more than 500,000 mostly ethnic Tutsi civilians.

“The death toll from this attack is more than 40 dead and several hurt — all on the FDLR side,” said Hamuli, the spokesman for a joint Rwanda-Congo military operation aimed at stamping out the remnants of the Hutu militia.

He said the attack took place late Thursday in Kashebere, in the eastern Congo region of Masisi. The FDLR commanders were in the midst of a meeting when the air raids began. A few miles (kilometers) away, a second attack took place.

“The death toll there was high as well. The survivors threw the bodies in the river,” Hamuli said.

The echoes of Rwanda’s genocide are still being felt in Congo nearly 15 years later. The presence of the FDLR in Congo’s terraced hills has destabilized the region, giving rise to a counter rebel group, made up of Congolese Tutsis. While that group claimed to be protecting Congo’s Tutsi minority from the Hutu militia, it too is now accused of grave abuses.

Congo has long accused Rwanda of backing the Tutsi militia — known as the CNDP. Rwanda, on the other hand, has accused Congo of aiding the FDLR and the two countries twice went to war over the issue.

But in a recent turn, Congo agreed to join forces with Rwanda in order to finally root out the last of the FDLR. The joint operation began last month. Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, however, gave a news conference to make it known that he expects troops from his former enemy to leave Congolese territory by the end of February.

More than 40 rebels killed in Congo air raid – Los Angeles Times