Riots prompt state of emergency in Israel

LOD, Israel — Israel's prime minister declared a state of emergency Wednesday in response to riots spreading across the country that led to schools, synagogues and cars being set ablaze in Jewish neighbourhoods, as the president blamed the chaos on a “bloodthirsty Arab mob.”

A curfew was imposed in the central city of Lod, and the wave of violence spread to cities including Haifa, Acre and Ramla, as Hamas fired hundreds of rockets and Israel continued to bomb the crowded coastal enclave of Gaza.

The death toll was nearly 60 by late Wednesday, including six Israelis and at least 53 Palestinians. About 16 children, 14 of them Palestinian, were believed to have died, as well as several top Hamas commanders. On Wednesday night, a six-yearold boy was killed by a Hamas rocket attack on the city of Sderot in southern Israel.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza were expected to continue, as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, warned that the operation was far from over. Benny Gantz, the defence minister, said that Israeli strikes would not stop until there was “complete quiet” from militants in Gaza.

Israeli police chiefs were already drawing comparisons between the riots and severe unrest in 2000 that heralded the Second Intifada, a mass Palestinian uprising against the Jewish state that lasted for five years.

In Lod, a city with a significant Arab Israeli population, Jewish families were clearing debris from the fire-ravaged interior of a school as the stench of burned rubber and plastic wafted through the air Wednesday morning.

The building had been attacked with Molotov cocktails by a group of about 30 masked Arabs, according to Jewish families in the area.