Palestinian militants announce Gaza ceasefire after heaviest border rocket raid in months
PALESTINIAN militants said yesterday that they would halt attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip after they fired the heaviest rocket salvoes across the border in months.
The Islamic Jihad, one of the armed groups that operates in Gaza, said it fired the rockets in retaliation for Israel killing four Palestinian protesters on Friday. Israel struck dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip yesterday in response.
Video footage showed several of the rockets from Gaza being shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system. No casualties were reported.
Israel took the unusual step of claiming Syria and Iran had been behind the attacks and hinted that its response would not be limited to Gaza. “The rockets that were launched against Israel... we know that the orders, incentives were given from Damascus with the clear involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force,” Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman, said, referring to the Guards’ foreign operations unit. Col Conricus told reporters Israel’s response “is not limited geographically”.
Israel has regularly hit Iranian tar- gets in Syria, but has never struck these sites in response to bombardments from Gaza.
Islamic Jihad is an Iranian-backed military group that sometimes operates independently of Gaza’s Hamas rulers. Its armed wing initially threatened to expand its rocket fire.
But later, the group’s spokesman announced an immediate ceasefire.
The biggest rocket barrage from Gaza in months came despite talk of progress towards an Egyptian-brokered deal to end months of often violent protests along the border in return for an easing of Israel’s crippling 11-year blockade.
Last week, Israel reopened the people and goods border crossings with Gaza and on Wednesday renewed the flow of Qatar-funded fuel to the Palestinian enclave.