Hamas attacks as Israeli tension rises
HAMAS militants in the Gaza Strip have fired rockets towards Jerusalem, setting off air raid sirens throughout the city, after hundreds of Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli police at a flashpoint religious site in the contested holy city.
The early-evening attack drastically escalated what are already heightened tensions throughout the region following weeks of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem.
Shortly after the sirens sounded, explosions could be heard throughout Jerusalem.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The Israeli army said there was an initial burst of seven rockets, one was intercepted, and rocket fire was continuing.
Gaza health officials said nine people, including three children, were killed in an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip.
The cause of the blast was not immediately known.
Elsewhere in Gaza, an Israeli drone strike killed a Palestinian in the northern Gaza Strip, Hamas media reported.
The Israeli army said an Israeli civilian in the country’s south suffered mild injuries when a vehicle was struck by an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said the rocket attack was a response to what he called Israeli “crimes and aggression” in Jerusalem.
“This is a message the enemy has to understand well,” he said.
He threatened more attacks if Israel again invades the sacred AlAqsa compound or carries out evictions of Palestinian families in a neighbourhood of east Jerusalem.
Earlier, Israeli police firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians at the compound. More than a dozen tear gas canisters and stun grenades landed in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, as police and protesters faced off inside the walled compound that surrounds it, said an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
Smoke rose in front of the mosque and the famous golden-domed shrine on the site, and rocks littered the nearby plaza.
Inside one area of the compound, shoes and debris lay scattered over ornate carpets.
In an apparent attempt to avoid further confrontation, Israeli authorities changed the planned route of a march by ultranationalist Jews through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
The marchers were ordered to avoid the area and sent on a different route circumventing the Muslim Quarter on their way to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.