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IDF Spokesman Reports on Gaza Fighting
(Times of Israel) Judah Ari Gross - The Israel Defense Forces have struck more than 150 military targets in Gaza in response to Hamas rocket fire. "There is ample room for additional targets," said Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus, an IDF spokesperson. "We have signaled to Hamas over the course of this night that we have the intelligence and ability to strike a variety of military targets that belong to Hamas." Only small numbers of reserve personnel, mostly from air defense units, have been called up to army service. Conricus warned that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have "in excess of 20,000 rockets and mortar shells of different calibers and ranges" in their arsenals, almost twice the number that they had in the 2014 war. "Unfortunately they are not near the end of their capabilities." "The Iron Dome so far has been phenomenal, but even the Iron Dome is not hermetic and we cannot expect it to intercept everything, especially when it's dealing with this amount of rockets," Conricus said. "It is unfortunate that of the dozens of rockets fired at Ashhkelon, one was able to get through our defenses and hit a building in a populated area." Conricus said the Hamas leadership and fighters have mostly stayed underground throughout the fighting, launching their rockets with timers and other remote-controlled devices in order to avoid being hit by Israeli airstrikes. "They fire rockets from within the Gaza civilian population at our civilian population, and they do so while hiding beneath their civilian population," he said.