Israeli air raids pummel Gaza as militants fire 100 rockets
TEL AVIV: Palestinian militants in Gaza fired about 100 rockets into Israel, drawing retaliatory air strikes, a day after a botched Israeli raid left seven Palestinians and an Israeli commander dead and led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut short a European trip in a bid to prevent war.
A rocket from Gaza struck an Israeli bus, critically wounding one person, the military and rescue services said, and Israeli fighter jets struck positions across the Hamas-ruled coastal strip. Hamas said it fired volleys of rockets after an Israeli artillery strike on one of its border observation posts.
Palestinians said two militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine were killed in the Israeli air strikes.
The confrontation followed a night of violence sparked by a covert Israeli operation inside Gaza that went awry when the soldiers were discovered. The raid led to clashes that killed a senior Hamas commander and six other Palestinians, as well as a high-ranking Israeli officer, and set off hours of airstrikes and rocket barrages.
Israeli media described the raid as an intelligence-gathering mission that went awry. The Israeli military gave few details, with the army’s commander, Lt Gen Gadi Eisenkot, saying only that a special forces team operated “in a very meaningful operation to protect Israel’s security.”
The raid and the high-level casualties threatened to undermine efforts by Egypt and the United Nations to reach a longterm truce between Israel and Gaza and ease the dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory, which has been under a blockade since Hamas seized power.