Israel faced a new barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip Thursday as violence continued a day after Israeli fighter jets hit Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage sites there.
(Bloomberg) — Israel faced a new barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip Thursday as violence continued a day after Israeli fighter jets hit Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage sites there.
Tensions have been escalating with the week-long Jewish Passover holiday, overlapping with the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Late Wednesday, renewed clashes broke out between Israeli police and Palestinians inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a flashpoint.
Seven surface-to-air rockets exploded in mid-air without being intercepted after being launched from the Gaza Strip, setting off air raid sirens in southern Israel, the Israeli military said. Five were fired at southern Israel and two toward the Gaza Strip Sea, it said.
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Israeli police used force to remove people at Al-Aqsa, which lies in a hillside spot sacred for both Muslims and Jews which has sparked conflict in the past, for the second time Wednesday. They said they intervened in the compound after mostly masked men tried to barricade themselves inside. When they tried to remove the men, stones and fireworks were thrown and they went in forcibly.
Rockets Wednesday flew toward the Israeli city of Sderot and were shot down by Israel. Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls Gaza, had denounced the Israeli police action at Al-Aqsa. It had earlier urged Palestinians to go to the holy site and barricade themselves in to prevent Jews who might seek to enter as part of Passover observance.
The US has urged restraint. “Violence has no place in a holy site and during a holy season,” the US Office of Palestinian Affairs said in a statement Wednesday, adding it was “alarmed by the shocking scenes in Al Aqsa Mosque and rockets launched from Gaza toward Israel.”
The Palestinian authority, which runs the West Bank, also condemned Israel’s police action. The new right-wing Israeli government includes ministers who favor greater Jewish presence atop the holy site.
The fresh confrontation coincides with an escalation in Israel’s shadow war with its main regional enemy Iran, which supports militant groups committed to Israel’s destruction like Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories.
–With assistance from Fadwa Hodali.
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