Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar heads to Egypt amid renewed Gaza violence

Yahya Sinwar travelled to Cairo hours after the Israeli military struck several Hamas positions in Gaza in response to explosive balloons launched from the strip late Wednesday.

The new escalation comes amid accusations against Israel of slowing down the implementation of an Egyptian-brokered deal aimed at easing the situation in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Following the airstrikes, Palestinian militants fired back rockets at southern Israel. No injuries were reported on either side.

The new wave of violence marked the first Israeli strike in more than a month of relative and cautious calm that followed the unofficial deal, mediated by Egypt.

Hamas said that Sinwar will meet the director of Egypt's general intelligence to discuss "ways of alleviating the suffering" of Gaza's 2 million residents.

Hamas accuses Israel of not complying with the Egypt-mediated deal, under which Israel had expanded the permitted fishing zone off Gaza's coast to 15 nautical miles, but only to scale back the area to its previous limit of 9 miles this week after a Gaza rocket was fired.

Hamas, which controls Gaza since a 2007, say Israel did not honor other commitments, such as allowing the transfer of Qatari money to Gaza's cash-strapped public institutions as well as taking measures to further ease the territory's grinding power shortages.

During the lull, Hamas held weekly protests along the Gaza-Israel perimeter fence to highlight Gaza's hardships more than a decade since Israel and Egypt blockaded the territory.

Over 200 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed during the marches, which sometimes grew into brief cross-border exchanges of rockets and airstrikes.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have fought three wars since 2008.

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