Hamas said on Sunday that its armed wing had fired rockets at Israeli forces near the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Gaza and Israel. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, reported that the attack injured several people.
The Israeli military said about 10 rockets had been fired from an area near the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt toward Kerem Shalom.
Kerem Shalom is one of the few crossings through which humanitarian aid is able to enter the Gaza Strip. After the attack on Sunday, the army said it was closed to the passage of aid trucks.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and said it showed that Hamas was not interested in having aid enter the territory, parts of which a United Nations official says are experiencing “a full-blown famine.”
The ministry said that while the army was “facilitating humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, terrorists fire rockets into the same area.”
“Israel remains committed to providing lifesaving aid while Hamas remains committed to destroying lives,” it added.
After the attack, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a far-right member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, urged Mr. Netanyahu to authorize a long-anticipated military assault on Rafah.
“We did not attack Gaza and we got Oct. 7,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said in a statement posted online. “We didn’t attack Rafah and we got a precision attack, Netanyahu, go to Rafah now!”