ISRAEL and Hamas are once again at war after the Palestinian militant group launched a large aerial and ground operation from the blockaded Gaza Strip, its biggest attack in years.
Sirens sounded across Israel and as far north as the contested city of Jerusalem from about 7 a.m. on Saturday after volleys of what Hamas claimed were 5,000 rockets launched from the blockaded enclave. A ground infiltration by Hamas gunmen into Israeli towns and villages on the periphery – an unprecedented development in the 16 years since the Islamists took over the strip – is ongoing, with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) saying that at one point, seven villages and towns were under Hamas control. The Israeli army put the number of projectiles at about 2,200.
In response to the attacks, which appear to have caught the Israeli security services by surprise, Israel has declared a state of war.
Men holding up arms on top of and in front of a burning tank next to a border fence. Another man is taking a photo with his phone.
“Our enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known,” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a televised statement. “We are in a war and we will win it”
Unconfirmed initial reports and graphic pictures and video appeared to show that gunmen had opened fire in the border town of Sderot, killing several Israeli civilians and soldiers. It has been confirmed that an elderly woman died in a rocket attack, and that another four people in Bedouin villages in Israel’s south were killed by rocket fire.
One hundred Israelis have been confirmed dead so far and 908 injured, with the death toll likely to rise. At least 198 Palestinians were reported killed in Gaza in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes beginning on Saturday afternoon, and five Hamas militants were reported killed inside Israel.
An unknown number of Israelis have been taken captive by fighters, with unverified social media footage showing elderly people and a young woman with her hands tied inside Gaza. The IDF later confirmed both civilian and military hostages had been taken to Gaza, but did not give details.
In a statement, Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander in Gaza, announced the start of a new operation to free Jerusalem’s sensitive al-Aqsa mosque compound, which has had an increase in the number of Jewish visitors in the past few weeks owing to the Jewish high holidays. He said this was only the first stage of Hamas’s renewed efforts against Israel.
“We warned the enemy not to continue their aggression against the al-Aqsa mosque … The age of the enemy’s aggression without a response is over. I call on Palestinians everywhere in the West Bank and within the Green Line [Israeli territory] to launch an attack without restraint. Go to all the streets. I call on Muslims everywhere to launch an attack,” he said.
Source: The Guardian
