Israel launches air strikes in Gaza after rocket lands in Ashdod

The Israeli air force carried out four strikes on targets in the besieged Gaza Strip early Wednesday, Palestinian eyewitnesses said, hours after a cross-border rocket landed in the Israeli city of Ashdod.

The planes targeted training camps belonging to the Islamic Jihad in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Gaza City, the witnesses said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing, said that they had fired five experimental rockets into the sea, but one of them had landed by mistake in the southern Israeli city, Al Jazeera reported.

No casualties or damage was reported from the rocket.

The Israeli army said it struck "four terror infrastructures in the southern Gaza Strip" in response to the rocket.

"The reality that Hamas's territory is used as a staging ground to attack Israel is unacceptable and intolerable and will bear consequences," military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement.

Tuesday's rocket was the third fired from Gaza since the ceasefire ending the 50-day conflict in summer 2014, which killed about 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.

Two mortar bombs were also fired at Israel since September, according to the Shin Bet internal security agency, 

Wednesday's air strike was the third since the end of the 2014 war. 

Last month, tanks fired at a Hamas position following a rocket attack.