Israel accused Palestinian teams of firing a barrage of cross-border rockets from Lebanon Thursday, simply over a day after clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians inside Islam’s third-holiest website.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel’s enemies would “pay the worth”.
Israel’s army said it had “identified 34 rockets that were fired from Lebanese territory into Israeli territory” — the largest escalation alongside the frontier since Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day conflict in 2006.
Twenty-five rockets had been intercepted by Israeli air defences, whereas “5 rockets landed in Israeli territory,” added the army statement. The attack was not immediately claimed by any group.
But Israeli army spokesperson Lt. Colonel Richard Hecht blamed Palestinian groups.
“We know for sure it’s Palestinian fire,” he instructed reporters. “It could possibly be Hamas, it could possibly be Islamic Jihad, we’re nonetheless making an attempt to finalise nevertheless it wasn’t Hezbollah.
“We assume Hezbollah knew about it, and Lebanon additionally has some duty. We are additionally investigating whether or not Iran was concerned,” he continued.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati said he rejected any “escalation” from his nation after the rocket assault.
The barrage got here after Israeli police drew widespread condemnation from round the area for clashing early Wednesday with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque — Islam’s third-holiest website.
Netanyahu on Thursday mentioned in a cupboard assembly: “We will strike our enemies and they’ll pay the worth for any act of aggression.”
Israeli emergency services reported one man lightly wounded by shrapnel and a female injured while running to a shelter during the attack.
– ‘Extremely serious’ –
Warning sirens sounded in the town of Shlomi and in Moshav Betzet and the Galilee in northern Israel, the army said.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which patrols the border area between the two countries that are technically still at war, urged restraint.
“The current situation is extremely serious,” mentioned the power. “UNIFIL urges restraint and to keep away from additional escalation.”
The Israeli military denied to AFP that it had retaliated “thus far”, in response to studies from Lebanon’s National News Agency that Israel had struck targets in southern Lebanon.
According to the Lebanon report, Israeli artillery fired “a number of shells from its positions on the border” towards the outskirts of two villages after the launch of “several Katyusha type rockets” at Israel.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant “accomplished a state of affairs evaluation with senior officers in Israel’s defence institution”, after which he instructed “to prepare all the possible responses to recent events,” a press release mentioned.
Inspecting his broken workplace in the city of Shlomi, 46-year-old Shlomi Naaman instructed AFP: “I heard the siren, I heard the increase, I used to be in my dwelling, it was very very scary.”
Also from Shlomi, Noy Atias, 21, said: “It’s not something so special… this is the reality in Israel.”
“Security is the most essential factor in life, nothing else issues,” she said, accusing political leaders of being preoccupied by “things that are not important”.
– Al-Aqsa clashes –
Israeli riot police had on Wednesday stormed the prayer corridor of Al-Aqsa mosque in a pre-dawn raid aiming to dislodge “law-breaking youths and masked agitators” they said had barricaded themselves inside.
The violence, during both the Jewish Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, sparked an exchange of rockets and air strikes with militants in the Gaza Strip.
The US said it recognised “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself against all forms of aggression”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel instructed reporters.
“Our dedication to Israel’s safety is ironclad,” he added.
UN chief Antonio Guterres also condemned the rocket fire, calling on “all actors to exercise maximum restraint”.
France condemned what it referred to as “indiscriminate rocket hearth focusing on Israeli territory from Gaza and southern Lebanon”.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed movement Hezbollah had warned earlier Thursday it would support “all measures” that Palestinian teams could take towards Israel after the clashes.
“Hezbollah forcefully denounces the assault carried out by the Israeli occupation forces towards the Al-Aqsa mosque compound,” the group said in a statement.
The Lebanese group has close ties with the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza, and with the Islamic Jihad militant group, which is also based in the coastal enclave.
The rockets came a day after Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Lebanon for a visit.
Haniyeh late Thursday said the Palestinians would not “sit with their arms crossed” in the face of Israeli “aggression” against Al-Aqsa.
He called in a statement on “all Palestinian organisations to unify their ranks and intensify their resistance against the Zionist occupation (Israel)”.
The final rocket fired from Lebanon into Israel was in April 2022.
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