Fighting could drag on, Netanyahu warns

The Hamas militant group yesterday launched a rare rocket strike on Jerusalem after hundreds of Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli police at an iconic mosque, as tensions in the holy city pushed the region closer to full-fledged war.

Israel responded with airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, where 20 people, including nine children, were killed in fighting. More than 700 Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli security forces in Jerusalem and across the West Bank, including nearly 500 who were treated at hospitals.

It was a long day of anger and deadly violence that laid bare Jerusalem’s deep divisions, even as Israel tried to celebrate its capture of the city’s eastern sector and its sensitive holy sites more than half a century ago.

With dozens of rockets flying into Israel throughout the night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with top security officials and warned that the fighting could drag on, despite calls for calm from the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

‘‘The terrorist organisations in Gaza have crossed a red line and attacked us with missiles in the outskirts of Jerusalem,’’ Netanyahu said. ‘‘Whoever attacks us will pay a heavy price,’’ he said, warning that the fighting could ‘‘continue for some time’’.

By late Monday, local time, the military had carried out dozens of airstrikes across Gaza, targeting what it said were Hamas military installations and operatives. It said a Hamas tunnel, rocket launchers and at least eight militants had been hit.

Gaza health officials gave no further breakdowns on the casualties. At least 13 of the 20 deaths in Gaza were attributed to the airstrikes. Seven of the deaths were members of a single family, including three children, who died in a mysterious explosion in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

Shortly before midnight, the Israeli army said at least 150 rockets had been fired into Israel. That included a barrage of six rockets that targeted Jerusalem, some 100 kilometres away. It set off air raid sirens throughout Jerusalem, and explosions could be heard in what was believed to be the first time the city had been targeted since a 2014 war.

Dozens of rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system. But one landed near a home on the outskirts of Jerusalem, causing light damage to the structure and sparking a brush fire nearby. In southern Israel, an Israeli man was lightly wounded after a missile struck a vehicle.

In a statement issued yesterday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the rocket attacks would continue until Israel stops ‘‘all scenes of terrorism and aggression in Jerusalem and Al-aqsa mosque’’.

The mosque is in a hilltop compound that is the third-holiest site in Islam and the holiest in Judaism. Tensions at the site, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount, have triggered repeated bouts of violence in the past.

In Monday’s unrest, Israeli police fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets in clashes with stone-throwing Palestinians at the compound.

More than a dozen tear gas canisters and stun grenades landed in the mosque as police and protesters faced off inside the walled compound that surrounds it, said an Associated Press photographer at the scene. –AP