The Israeli Air Force carried out airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night in response to 37 rockets launched from the Palestinian enclave at southern Israel earlier in the day.

The army said it hit Gaza with "tank fire" in response to rockets from the Palestinian enclave, sparking a renewed volley from Gaza witnessed by AFP journalists.

The army late on Tuesday said it was carrying out air strikes on Gaza. The targets included a Hamas training camp; another base that housed a weapons production site, a concrete production plant, and a training site; a site belonging to the terror group’s naval commandos; and a tunnel used by Hamas in southern Gaza.

No injuries were reported following the Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the security officials said.

Palestinian security officials in Gaza said that Israeli reconnaissance drones and fighter jets hovered over the coastal enclave, ruled by Hamas, and then several explosions were heard in the northern and central Gaza Strip and western Gaza City, Xinhua news agency reported.

The exchange of gunfire followed the death of Khader Adnan, a 45-year-old prisoner, approximately three months after his arrest in the occupied West Bank due to his connections to the violent Islamic Jihad group. Adnan died in custody following an 87-day hunger strike, the first such death in more than three decades.

Khader Adnan, who was awaiting trial, was found unconscious in his cell and taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead after efforts to revive him failed, Israel’s Prisons Service said.

Since 2011, Adnan had conducted at least three hunger strikes in protest at detentions without charges by Israel.

The tactic has been used by other Palestinian prisoners, sometimes en masse, but none had died since 1992.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh described his death as a "deliberate assassination", charging Israel had killed him "by rejecting his request for his release, neglecting him medically and keeping him in his cell, despite the seriousness of his health condition".

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association, Adnan was arrested by Israel 12 times, spending around eight years in prison, mostly under so-called “administrative detention” – or detention without charges.

Adnan was most recently arrested and indicted in an Israeli military court on charges that included links to an outlawed group and incitement to violence, the prisons service said.

According to Israel, such detentions are necessary when evidence cannot be revealed in court due to the necessity to protect intelligence sources. According to Palestinians and human rights organizations, Israel routinely employs such detentions, which lack due process, to imprison hundreds of Palestinians for extended periods of time.

Image source: The Time of Israel