Israeli warplanes and battle tanks have pounded the Gaza Strip after a bomb explosion left casualties among Israeli forces as the Tel Aviv regime goes ahead with its acts of aggression against the besieged Palestinian coastal sliver.

Israeli regime warplanes on Saturday struck at least six positions of the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, in a series of airstrikes.

The Israeli military claimed in a statement earlier in the day that it had struck an observation post belonging to Hamas east of Khan Yunis city after an explosive device was detonated on an Israeli military patrol near the border between the occupied territories and the enclave.

There were conflicting reports about the casualties of the border explosion.

Reuters and the Associated Press said that four Israeli troops had been wounded in the blast, while Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Manar television network reported that one Israeli trooper had been killed and two others sustained serious injuries in the explosion.

There were no initial reports of injury in the Israeli tank fire against the Gaza Strip.

On December 29, 2017, Israeli military aircraft and battle tanks carried out a series of attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli assaults hit Hamas positions east of the Tuffah district of Gaza City.

The spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qidra, said in a statement that nobody had been injured by the Israeli fire.

The Israeli army said that Palestinian fighters had fired three rockets at occupied territories, two of which were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile system.

Police said the third had rocket hit a structure in a community near Gaza, causing damage but no casualties.

Palestinian children check their house that was damaged in an Israeli airstrike on a nearby Hamas base in Khan Yunis town in the southern Gaza Strip on December 13, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The Israeli military frequently bombs the Gaza Strip, with civilians being the main target of such attacks.

Israel has launched several wars on the Palestinian coastal sliver, the last of which began in early July 2014. The military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians. Over 11,100 others were also wounded in the war.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

The Israeli regime denies about 1.8 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs with proper wages as well as adequate healthcare and education.