More than 150 rockets fired into Israel from Gaza, Israel's government says
By Lawahez Jabari and Yuliya Talmazan
NBC News
May 4, 2019
More than 150 rockets were fired from the Gaza strip into southern Israel Saturday, the Israeli government said. Retaliatory Israeli attacks on Hamas military posts inside the strip killed at least one person and injured several others, according to Gazan authorities.
Earlier, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said more than 50 rockets have been fired in half an hour, of which dozens were intercepted by the country's Iron Dome aerial defense system.
Air-raid sirens sounded across southern Israel, according to the IDF, sending residents running for bomb shelters.
Palestinian Health Ministry officials in Gaza said one Palestinian was killed and four wounded as the result of Israel's retaliatory air force strikes on Saturday. Ashraf al Qudra, spokesman for the Health Ministry, said the person killed was a 22-year-old man.
Israel Police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld said there are heightened security measures in the south and increased patrols in cities after the wave of rockets. He said police bomb disposal experts were responding to rockets that have struck open areas in the south.
Rosenfeld said a house was damaged by a rocket in the town of Ashkelon, not far from the border with Gaza, but its occupants were safe.
MDA, Israel's emergency service, also said a 50-year-old woman was "severely injured" in a nearby town of Kiryat Gat after suffering shrapnel wounds.
The IDF said on Twitter that its tanks had begun to strike Hamas military targets. It said later Saturday that it has struck approximately 30 targets along the Gaza Strip.
Saturday's missile barrage comes after the IDF said that shots were fired at Israeli troops from southern Gaza on Friday, injuring two soldiers.
In response, an IDF aircraft targeted a military post of Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled over the territory since 2007. Hamas said that two of its members were killed and three were wounded in that strike.
Hamas would "continue to respond to the crimes by the occupation and it will not allow it to shed the blood of our people," its spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said in a statement on Saturday. He made no explicit claim for Hamas having fired the rockets.
Reuters quoted a source in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying he will convene security chiefs on Saturday to discuss the situation.
Israel and Hamas have managed to avert all-out war for the past five years. Egyptian mediators, credited with brokering a ceasefire after a Hamas rocket attack north of Tel Aviv in March triggered a burst of intense fighting, have been working to prevent any further escalation of hostilities.
Gaza, which is home to around two million Palestinians, has seen its economy suffer after years of blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts. Unemployment stands at 52 percent, according to the World Bank.
Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel in the past decade.
__________
Israel responds with airstrikes following Hamas rocket barrage
by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Israel Hayom
May 4, 2019
Gaza terrorists fired dozens of rockets into Israel on Saturday, drawing a wave of Israeli air strikes, as hostilities flared across the border for a second day.
Across the border, rocket sirens sent Israelis running to shelters, and the Magen David Adom ambulance service said one woman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in the city of Kiryat Gat. Many of the missiles were intercepted, the military said.
The escalation began on Friday when two Israeli soldiers were wounded by Gaza gunfire near the border. A retaliatory Israeli air strike killed two members of the Islamist Hamas group that governs Gaza.
On Saturday, Israel hit Gaza with airstrikes and tank fire after Palestinians fired about 150 rockets toward Israeli cities and villages.
The Israeli military said its forces had carried out attacks against more than 30 targets belonging to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.
A small armed pro-Hamas group in Gaza, The Protectors of Al-Aqsa, said one of its men was killed in an air strike on Saturday.
The Gaza Health Ministry said six Palestinians were wounded.
The Palestinian Education Ministry said it was evacuating schools in areas under Israeli bombardment.
The flare-up, which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene his Diplomatic-Security Cabinet, comes days before Muslims begin the holy month of Ramadan and Israelis celebrate Independence Day.
Israel is also due to host the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest finals in less than two weeks in Tel Aviv, towards which long-range rockets were launched in mid-March.
Although Israeli air strikes in retaliation for rockets from Gaza are a frequent occurrence, Israel and Hamas have managed to avert all-out war for the past five years.
Egyptian mediators, credited with brokering a ceasefire after a Hamas rocket attack north of Tel Aviv in March triggered a burst of intense fighting, have been working to prevent any further escalation of hostilities.
Netanyahu will meet security chiefs on Saturday to discuss the situation, a source in his office said.
Hamas would “continue to respond to the crimes by the occupation and it will not allow it to shed the blood of our people,” its spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua said in a statement on Saturday. He made no explicit claim for Hamas having fired the rockets.
One of the attacks was claimed by the Palestinian Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which said it fired rockets at the Israeli city of Ashkelon.
The Islamic Jihad said in a statement that the rocket barrages were a response to Friday’s events and that Israel has been delaying the implementation of previous understandings brokered by Cairo.
Hamas said on Thursday that its Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar, had traveled to Cairo for talks on efforts to maintain calm along the border and alleviate hardship in the enclave.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hamas fires 200 rockets into Israel, but the media headlines emphasize Israeli retaliatory raids killed a 14-month-old baby and her pregnant mother. And the UN will probably call it another war crime committed against innocent Palestinian civilians.
No comments:
Post a Comment