Israel bombed the house of Hamas’s chief in Gaza early on Sunday and the Islamist group fired rocket barrages at Tel Aviv as hostilities stretched right into a seventh day with no signal of abating.
At least 4 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes throughout the coastal enclave, well being officers mentioned, and lots of have been injured as the sounds of heavy bombardment roared by means of the night time.
Israelis dashed for bomb shelters as sirens warning of incoming rocket fireplace blared in Tel Aviv and the southern metropolis of Beersheba. Around 10 folks have been injured whereas working for shelters, medics mentioned.
At least 149 have been killed in Gaza for the reason that violence started on Monday, together with 41 youngsters, well being officers mentioned. Israel has reported 10 useless, together with two youngsters.
Envoys from the United States, United Nations and Egypt have been working to restore calm however have but to present any indicators of progress. The U.N. Security Council was due to meet in a while Sunday to focus on the worst outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years.
Both Israel and Hamas have insisted they might proceed their cross-border fireplace, a day after Israel destroyed a 12-storey constructing in Gaza City that had housed the U.S. Associated Press and Qatar-based Al Jazeera media operations.
The Israel army mentioned the al-Jala constructing was a official army goal, containing Hamas army workplaces, and that it had given warnings to civilians to get out of the constructing earlier than the assault.
The AP condemned the assault, and requested Israel to put ahead proof. “We have had no indication Hamas was within the constructing or lively within the constructing,” the news organisation said in a statement.
In what it called a reprisal for Israel’s destruction of the al-Jala building, Hamas fired rockets at Tel Aviv and towns in southern Israel early on Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late on Saturday that Israel was “still in the midst of this operation, it is still not over and this operation will continue as long as necessary.”
In a burst of air strikes early on Sunday, Israel focused the house of Yehya Al-Sinwar, who since 2017 has headed the political and army wings of Hamas in Gaza, the group’s TV station mentioned.
Another air strike killed a Gaza neurologist and wounded his spouse and daughter, Palestinian medics and relations mentioned.
AL-AQSA
Hamas started its rocket assault on Monday after weeks of tensions over a courtroom case to evict a number of Palestinian households in East Jerusalem, and in retaliation for Israeli police clashes with Palestinians close to town’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest website, throughout the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Speaking to crowds of protesters within the Qatari capital of Doha, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh mentioned late on Saturday that the underlying reason behind the hostilities was Jerusalem.
“The Zionists thought … they may demolish Al-Aqsa mosque. They thought they may displace our folks in Sheikh Jarrah,” mentioned Haniyeh.
“I say to Netanyahu: do not play with fire,” he continued, amid cheers from the group. “The title of this battle right now, the title of the conflict, and the title of the intifada, is Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” using the Arabic word for ‘uprising’.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups have fired around 2,300 rockets from Gaza since Monday, the Israeli military said on Saturday. It said about 1,000 were intercepted by missile defences and 380 fell into the Gaza Strip.
Israel has launched more than 1,000 air and artillery strikes into the densely populated coastal strip, saying they were aimed at Hamas and other militant targets.
WAR CRIMES
Earlier this week, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, told Reuters the court was “monitoring very closely” the most recent escalation of hostilities, amid an investigation now below means into alleged conflict crimes in earlier bouts of the battle.
Netanyahu accused Hamas of “committing a double conflict crime” by targeting civilians, and using Palestinian civilians as “human shields.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded “all sides that any indiscriminate focusing on of civilian and media buildings violates worldwide regulation and should be prevented in any respect prices,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement on Saturday.
There has been a flurry of U.S. diplomacy in recent days to try to quell the violence.
President Joe Biden’s envoy, Hady Amr, arrived in Israel on Friday for talks. Biden spoke with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas late on Saturday, and updated them on U.S. diplomatic efforts, the White House said.
But any mediation is complicated by the fact that the United States and most western powers do not talk to Hamas, which they regard as a terrorist organisation. And Abbas, whose power base is in the occupied West Bank, exerts little influence over Hamas in Gaza.
In Israel, the conflict has been accompanied by violence amongst the country’s mixed communities of Jews and Arabs, with synagogues attacked and Arab-owned shops vandalised.
There has also been an upsurge in deadly clashes in the occupied West Bank. At least 12 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank since Friday, most of them during clashes.
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