Gaza-Israel border - Palestinian militants
launched their heaviest barrages against Israel since the 2014
Gaza war on Tuesday and Israeli aircraft struck back, in a surge
of fighting after weeks of border violence.
Three Israeli soldiers were wounded by shrapnel, the
military said, after dozens of mortar bombs and rockets were
fired from the Gaza Strip, triggering warning sirens in southern
Israel throughout the day and after dark. There were no
immediate reports of Palestinian casualties.
Israel has long said it will not tolerate such attacks, and
its warplanes hit more than 30 targets belonging to armed
groups, including a cross-border tunnel under construction, the
military said. It accused Gaza's dominant Hamas movement and the
pro-Iran Islamic Jihad group of launching the salvoes.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed
responsibility for the firing and said it was in response to
Israel's killing of dozens of Palestinians since March 30,
mainly in Gaza border protests.
“Qassam and Jerusalem Brigades (the groups' armed wings)
announce joint responsibility for bombarding (Israel's) military
installations and settlements near Gaza with dozens of rocket
shells throughout the day,” they said in a joint statement.
"It comes in response to Zionist aggression and crimes
against our people and our resistance fighters ... in addition
to war crimes conducted by the enemy every day against our
people during the marches of return along the border of Gaza
Strip.
“Bombardment for bombardment and blood for blood.”
Hamas has largely abided by a de-facto ceasefire since the
2014 war.
A general view shows the buffer zone and the water borderline between Israel and the Gaza Strip as it is seen from the Israeli side near Zikim. Picture: Amir Cohen/Reuters
"THRESHOLD OF WAR"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened security
chiefs, and Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said the country
was "at the closest point to the threshold of war" since the
seven-week conflict with Palestinian militants four years ago.
"If the firing (from Gaza) does not stop, we will have to
escalate our responses and it could lead to a deterioration of
the situation," Katz said on Army Radio.
Daoud Shehab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, said Egyptian
officials had been in contact with the group to try to restore
calm. He said Islamic Jihad did not want the violence to
escalate and blamed Israel for the flare-up.
"If Israel abides by calm and ceases all forms of aggression
against our people in Gaza, we will also maintain calm," he
said.
Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said the most extensive strikes
from Gaza since the 2014 war also drew "the largest IDF
retaliatory attack" since that conflict.
The Israeli military said more than 25 projectiles were
fired on Tuesday. Several were shot down by its Iron Dome rocket
interceptor system while others landed in empty lots and
farmland.
One exploded in the yard of a kindergarten, damaging its
walls and scattering the playground with debris and shrapnel,
about an hour before it was scheduled to open for the day.
Violence has soared along the Gaza frontier in recent weeks,
during which 116 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at
mass demonstrations calling for Palestinians' right to return to
ancestral lands now in Israel.
A Hamas spokesman defended Tuesday's attacks as a "natural
response to Israeli crimes". An Islamic Jihad spokesman said
"the blood of our people is not cheap".
EXPLOSIONS IN GAZA
Plumes of smoke and dust rose from the sites hit in the
Israeli air strikes. The powerful explosions shook buildings
nearby, causing panic among rush-hour crowds on streets and in
markets. The Gazan Ministry of Education said shrapnel from one
missile flew into a school.
Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N.'s special coordinator for the
Middle East peace process, said he was deeply concerned by "the
indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from
Gaza towards communities in southern Israel".
Amid international condemnation of its use of lethal force
at the mass demonstrations that began on March 30, Israel said
many of the dead were militants and that the army was repelling
attacks on the border fence.
Palestinians and their supporters say most of the protesters
were unarmed civilians and Israel was using excessive force
against them.
Off Gaza's coast on Tuesday, the Israeli navy intercepted a
boat that organisers of the Palestinian border protests launched
from the enclave in a challenge to an Israeli maritime blockade.
The military said the vessel was stopped without much
incident and would be towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod where
the 17 people on board would be questioned and then returned to
the Gaza Strip.
More than two million Palestinians are packed into the
narrow coastal enclave. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers
from Gaza in 2005 but, citing security concerns, maintains tight
control of its land and sea borders, which has reduced its
economy to a state of collapse.
Egypt also restricts movement in and out of Gaza on its
border.