Tel Aviv, Feb. 23: Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched rockets at southern Israel and Israeli aircraft struck targets in the coastal enclave early Thursday after a deadly gun battle with Israeli troops during a raid in the occupied West Bank that killed 10 Palestinians.

The bloodshed extends one of the deadliest periods in years between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the year. Palestinian attacks on Israelis in 2023 have killed 11 people.

The Israeli military said Palestinian militants fired six rockets from the Gaza Strip toward the country’s south early Thursday. The Israeli military said air defenses intercepted five of the rockets, which were fired toward the cities of Ashkelon and Sderot. One missile landed in an open field.

Israeli aircraft then struck several targets in northern and central Gaza, including a weapons-manufacturing site and a military compound belonging to the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza. There were no reports of injuries in Israel or Gaza.

The violence comes in the first weeks of Israel’s new far-right government, which has promised to take a tough line against the Palestinians and pledged to ramp up constructions of Jewish settlements on lands that Palestinians seek for their future state. Israeli security forces have stepped up arrest raids in the West Bank since a series of deadly Palestinian attacks last spring, operations that Israel says are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future assaults.

But they have shown few signs of slowing the violence, and Wednesday’s raid in the West Bank town of Nablus resulted in one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a year in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, raising the likelihood of further bloodshed.

“We have a clear policy: to strike terror powerfully and to deepen our roots in our land,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his Cabinet. “We will settle accounts with whoever harms Israeli citizens.”

Israeli police increased security in sensitive areas. The ruling Hamas group in Gaza said its patience was “running out,” while Islamic Jihad, another militant group, vowed to retaliate.-Agencies