It’s a classic scene. Israeli airstrikes targeted targets in the Gaza Strip early Thursday. They intervened shortly after rockets were fired at Israel from the area and caused no casualties.
According to these witnesses, at least eight rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel before dawn Thursday after Palestinian Islamic Jihad called on “resistance forces” to respond “without hesitation” to a “massive crime”. In a press release, the Israeli military, for its part, noted that six rockets were fired, five of which were intercepted by its anti-aircraft defense system, and the last one landed in an uninhabited area.
No casualties were reported by Israeli emergency services immediately after the shooting. The latter triggered warning sirens at around 4 a.m. (2 a.m. GMT) in the Israeli towns of Sterod and Ashkelon (south) near the Gaza Strip, the military said.
Unsurprisingly, Israeli airstrikes hit targets in the Gaza Strip early Thursday, an AFP reporter noted. Shortly after 6 a.m. (0400 GMT), black smoke billowed over one of the targeted sites north of Gaza City. In a statement sent to the press a few minutes later, the Israeli military indicated that it was “conducting attacks in the Gaza Strip”.
read more: Israeli missiles against Palestinian rockets in Gaza night
The Israeli military has a history of retaliating against attacks on targets by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has been in power in Gaza since 2007.
A journey into Nablus
Earlier on Wednesday 11 Palestinians were killed and more than 80 wounded by bullets during an Israeli military offensive in Nablus, the scene of ongoing and deadly clashes in the northern West Bank.
Wednesday’s incursion into Nablus was the deadliest operation by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank since at least 2005. Since the beginning of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed 60 Palestinians (including members of armed groups and civilians) and nine civilians (including three minors), as well as one Israeli policeman and one Ukrainian. For an AFP account compiled from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
Read again: Shawan Jabarin: ‘In the West Bank, all the elements are in place for a major explosion’
In New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “(this is) the most combustible situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory for years”. “Our immediate priority is to prevent further escalation, reduce tensions and restore calm.” The EU called on “all parties (to work) to return to peace and ease tensions”.
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