Hamas, Israel step up attacks
GAZA/JERUSALEM — Israel intensified its air strikes on Gaza on Tuesday as rocket barrages hit Israeli towns for a second day in a deepening conflict in which at least 28 people in the Palestinian enclave and two in Israel have been killed.
The most serious outbreak of fighting since 2019 between Israel and armed factions in Hamas Islamistrun Gaza was triggered by clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on Monday.
The holy city has been tense during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, with sporadic unrest and possible evictions of Palestinians from homes claimed by Jewish settlers in a court case adding to the friction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would step up its strikes on Gaza in the face of the surge in rocket attacks.
“At the conclusion of a situational assessment, it was decided that both the strength of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” he said in video statement.
Within an hour, Israel had intensified its air strikes in and around Gaza City, a Reuters witness said, with plumes of smoke rising from densely-populated residential areas.
The Gaza health ministry said at least 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, had been killed and 152 wounded by Israeli strikes in the enclave of two million people since Hamas on Monday fired rockets towards Jerusalem for the first time since 2014.
Israel’s national ambulance service said two women were killed in rocket strikes on the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
In the town of Beit
“Gaza has had enough, and nothing makes a difference now. Our children are getting killed. What should we do?” Abdel-hamid Hamad Nephew, 11, was killed Monday in air strike
Hanooun in northern Gaza, Abdel-hamid Hamad said his nephew Hussein, 11, was killed on Monday in what residents said was an Israeli air strike. He told Reuters the boy was collecting wood when he was hit.
“Gaza has had enough, and nothing makes a difference now. Our children are getting killed. What should we do?” Hamad said.
In Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, an Israeli woman treated for injuries after her apartment was hit by a Palestinian rocket recalled moments of panic.
An air conditioner fell on her and one of her children during the night and a bathroom door fell on her husband’s head, the woman told Channel 13 TV, which did not give her name.
Israel disputed the Gaza account of casualties in the territory, saying it had killed at least 20 Hamas fighters and that a third of the hundreds of rockets launched by militants had fallen short, causing Palestinian civilian casualties.
In one Gaza neighbourhood, an Israeli missile exploded inside an apartment in a multi-story building, killing three Islamic Jihad members, a militant official said.
Police said more than 30 people were hurt by rocket strikes in southern Israel, though the military said its air defences were intercepting about 90 per cent of the crossborder launches.
Hamas said that in one fiveminute barrage alone, it had fired 137 missiles at Ashkelon and Ashdod, both lying south of Tel Aviv, where several homes were on fire and a school, empty at the time, was hit.
Israeli tanks massed on the Gaza border as officials said infantry and armour reinforcements were being dispatched.
The Arab League, some of whose members have warmed ties with Israel over the last year, accused it of “indiscriminate and irresponsible” attacks in Gaza and said it was responsible for “dangerous escalation” in Jerusalem.