29 Mar 2024
Tuesday 8 July 2014 - 23:10
Story Code : 105660

At least 12 killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza

At least 12 killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza
[caption id="attachment_105666" align="alignright" width="222"] Smoke and flames are seen following what police said was an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 8, 2014. (Reuters)[/caption]
At least four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike targeted their car in Gaza city on Tuesday and at least seven others were killed when a house was bombed in Khan Younis, a southern area in the Gaza Strip.
Emergency services earlier said that a man named Ashraf Yassin was also killed when Israeli fighter planes targeted an area west of Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The man is reportedly a militant member of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas armed wing.

Meanwhile, Israeli television stations said a rocket has targeted Tel Aviv but was intercepted.

Air raid sirens went off in the city, which is Israel's commercial capital and about 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said on its Twitter account (@IDFSpokesperson) that the rocket was intercepted by Israel's "Iron Dome" defense system.

The apparent rocket attack would be the deepest strike by Palestinian militants since Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier Tuesday.

The escalation came as Israel stepped up what it said might become a long-term military operation against Hamas, which has launched a wave of rockets on Israeli towns.

The Israeli military said a ground invasion of the enclave was possible, though not imminent, and urged citizens within a range of 40 km (24 miles) of the coastal territory to stay close to bomb shelters, according to Reuters.

Some 1,500 Israeli reservists had been mobilized and more could be called up, the Israeli military has said.

Operation Protective Edge: As Hamas continues to fire rockets, the IDF will respond forcefully to protect Israeli citizens, the Israeli army said on its Twitter account.

Smoke and flames are seen following what police said was an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip July 8, 2014. (Reuters)



 

Hamas will not be safe as long as it continues to threaten the lives of Israeli civilians, the army added.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement carried by Reuters: We are preparing for a battle against Hamas which will not end within a few days.

We will not tolerate missiles being fired at Israeli towns and we are prepared to extend the operations with all means at our disposal in order to keep hitting Hamas, he added.

The Israel-Gaza border heated up last month after Israels arrest of hundreds of Hamas activists in the occupied West Bank, where three Israeli youths went missing on June 12.

More than 200 rockets have been launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip, the military said, since Israel mounted the dragnet while searching for the teens, who were found dead last week.

Israel has accused Hamas militants of killing them. In a suspected revenge attack, a Palestinian teen was abducted in East Jerusalem last Wednesday. His charred body was found in a forest and six Israeli suspects have been arrested.
Racing for cover
Explosions echoed across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, shaking buildings and sending smoke rising from targets hit by Israeli fire. In residential areas, the sounds of crying children could be heard as ambulance sirens wailed. Some people took to rooftops to watch for Israeli aircraft and rockets streaking toward Israel.

In the Israeli port city of Ashdod, motorists scrambled out of their vehicles and raced for the relative safety of apartment house entrances as a siren sounded. The scene was repeated in other towns near the Gaza Strip.

Hamas armed wing, the dominant force in the enclave, threatened an earthquake in response to Israels attacks. But a Palestinian source close to the group said it was ready to restore calm if Israel met conditions, including a prisoner release.

The Israeli military, announcing it had launched Operation Protective Edge, said it targeted about 50 sites in aerial and naval assaults overnight and resumed air strikes on Tuesday morning after rockets were fired at southern Israeli towns.

Warning sirens, which police described as false alarms, sounding as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, some 70 km (40 miles) from Gaza.

The heavy barrage followed the deaths, in disputed circumstances on Monday, of six Hamas men in a tunnel which the Israeli military said the militant group had built under the border to carry out an attack in Israel.

In one Israeli attack overnight that destroyed a Gaza home, the Palestinian Interior Ministry said the family received a telephone call from an Israeli officer telling them to leave. But the ministry said nine neighbors were wounded.

At least one of the targeted homes belonged to a Hamas militant, according to a neighbor.

Setting out terms for a truce, the source close to Hamas said Israel had to stop all forms of aggression, recommit to a 2012 Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and release prisoners it detained in the occupied West Bank last month.

Hamas has been reeling over an Egyptian crackdown on most of the estimated 1,200 cross-border smuggling tunnels run by the group, which Egypt says are used to take weapons into the Sinai
Peninsula.

A further weakening of Hamas could lead to more radical Islamist groups in Gaza becoming stronger, a scenario that could alarm Israel.

By Al Arabiya

 

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