Fresh fights scar region where hopes grow stale
At least 4 killed as Palestinians, Israel trade airstrikes
JERUSALEM — Militants in Gaza fired more than 200 rockets into southern Israel on Saturday, and Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fire, ending weeks of relative calm and threatening efforts to forge a long-term truce.
Palestinians said at least three people, including a baby, were killed by Israeli actions. Officials later said the toll had risen to four.
In Israel, rocket sirens blared and thousands of Israeli civilians — as far as 30 miles from Gaza — spent the day in or close to bomb shelters.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its Iron Dome air-defense batteries intercepted dozens of the rockets. Israeli emergency services said an 80-year-old woman was seriously injured by shrapnel during the rocket barrage and a 50-year- old man was treated for moderate wounds.
In Gaza, health authorities said a 22-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman and her 14-month-old girl were killed as Israeli jets carried out airstrikes. A 25-year-old Palestinian was also reported killed by shrapnel while riding a three-wheel motorcycle in the northern Gaza Strip. An additional 18 were injured. Others were treated for injuries they sustained while running for shelter from rockets as well as for shock.
Israeli officials said they hit dozens of “terror targets” inside the Palestinian enclave, which is control by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Sa t u rd ay ’s violence comes in the midst of negotiations over a longer term truce between Hamas and Israel, during which the militant group has tried to assert pressure in negotiations with rocket fire and incendiary balloons.
Hamas is attempting to secure an easing of Israeli restrictions on trade and movement, in return for a lull in violence.
However, the Israeli military said Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second largest militant group, which is also involved in the negotiations, was responsible for the rocket fire.
In a joint statement Gaza’s militant factions said that the rocket fire was in response to “targeting and assassination” of their militants a day earlier. “Our response will be tougher and larger and broader in the face of aggression,” they said in a statement.
The Israeli military reported Friday that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a shooting incident along its border with Gaza. In response, Israel struck sites belonging to the Izz ad-Din al-Q ass am Brigade, Hamas’s military wing, killing two fighters.
In addition on Friday, two Palestinian protesters were killed taking part in ongoing weekly demonstrations at the border fence with Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
It also said tanks and military jets were targeting sites in the northern and eastern sections of Gaza. The Army’s Chief of the Staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi met with senior security officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to be briefed.
“It’s a reply to the Israeli targeting of peaceful civilians yesterday by Israeli snipers during the 58th Friday of Great March of Return,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s bureau for international relations, referring to the weekly protests staged in Gaza since last year. “Also, to the procrastination policies of the occupation toward lifting the siege on Gaza.”
Gazans have been holding weekly demonstrations along the border, protesting the dire humanitarian situation in the strip that worsens daily and the ongoing land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since Hamas forcibly took power in 2007. Egypt opens its border with Gaza only sporadically.
Hamas spokesman Abdullatif Al-Qanoua said the group would continue to “respond to the crimes of the occupation” and “not allow the blood of our people to be shed.”
Musab al-Bur aim, spokesman of Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant faction in Gaza, said in a short statement that it too was committed to “resistance.”
Representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad visited Egypt last week to discuss the understandings reached with Israel to reduce tensions. The Egyptians have spent months trying to forge a long-term truce agreement between the sides in an effort to bring calm and ease the dire humanitarian situation in for two million Gazans.
But Saturday’s unrest could affect attempts by Netanyahu to form a coalition after being re-elected for a fifth term.
His last government began to unravel after a similar flare-up with Gaza when then Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned after calling for a tougher approach to the rocket fire.