Israeli air strikes hammered the Gaza Strip pre-dawn Monday, immediately after a week of violence in between the Jewish state and Islamist militants left more than 200 people today dead as international calls for de-escalation went unheeded.
Overnight Sunday to Monday, Israel launched dozens of strikes in the space of a handful of minutes across the crowded coastal Palestinian enclave controlled by Islamist group Hamas, according to AFP journalists at the scene.
The strikes triggered widespread energy cuts and broken hundreds of buildings, regional authorities mentioned. No casualties have been quickly reported.
West Gaza resident Mad Abed Rabbo, 39, expressed “horror and fear” at the intensity of the onslaught.
“There have never been strikes of this magnitude,” he mentioned.
In a statement just just before 2:00 am (2300 GMT Sunday), the Israeli army mentioned its fighter jets have been “striking terror targets in the Gaza Strip”.
Gazan Mani Qazaat mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “should realise we’re civilians, not fighters”.
“I felt like I was dying.”
The renewed strikes come a day immediately after 42 Palestinians in Gaza — which includes at least eight children and two physicians, according to the wellness ministry — have been killed in the worst each day death in the enclave because the bombardments started.
In total, 197 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, which includes at least 58 children, and more than 1,200 wounded because Israel launched its air campaign against Hamas on May 10 immediately after the group fired rockets. The heaviest exchange of fire in years was sparked by unrest in Jerusalem.
In Israel, 10 people today, which includes one youngster, have been killed and 282 wounded by rocket fire launched by armed groups in Gaza.
‘Legitimate’
Israel’s army mentioned about 3,000 rockets had been fired because last Monday from Gaza towards Israel — the highest price ever recorded — but added the Iron Dome anti-missile technique had intercepted more than 1,000.
Netanyahu mentioned in a televised address Sunday that Israel’s “campaign against the terrorist organisations is continuing with full force” and would “take time” to finish.
The Israeli army mentioned it had targeted the infrastructure of Hamas and armed group Islamic Jihad, which includes a vast tunnel technique, weapons factories and storage web sites.
Israeli air strikes also hit the home of Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s political wing in Gaza, the army mentioned, releasing footage of plumes of smoke and intense harm, but without the need of saying if he was killed.
Balls of flame and a cloud of debris shot into the sky Saturday afternoon as Israel’s air force flattened a constructing housing Al Jazeera and AP news agency, immediately after providing journalists an hour to evacuate.
Netanyahu on Sunday mentioned the constructing also hosted a Palestinian “terrorist” intelligence workplace.
“It is a perfectly legitimate target,” he mentioned.
Inter-communal clashes
The violence in between Hamas and Israel is the worst because 2014, when Israel launched a military operation on the Gaza Strip with the stated aim of ending rocket fire and destroying tunnels applied for smuggling.
The war left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side, mainly civilians, and 74 on the Israeli side, mainly soldiers.
Opening the very first session of the UN Security Council on the renewed violence on Sunday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres referred to as the fighting “utterly appalling”.
“It must stop immediately,” he mentioned.
But the UN talks, currently delayed by Israel’s ally the United States, resulted in tiny action, with Washington opposing a resolution.
President Joe Biden’s administration says it is working behind the scenes and that a Security Council statement could backfire.
Israel is also attempting to include inter-communal violence in between Jews and Arab-Israelis, as effectively as deadly clashes in the occupied West Bank, exactly where 19 Palestinians have been killed because Monday, according to a toll from Palestinian authorities.
Major clashes broke out at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound — one of Islam’s holiest web sites — on May 7 following a crackdown against protests more than planned expulsions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Sheikh Jarrah has been at the heart of the flareup, seeing weeks of clashes in between Palestinians and Israeli safety forces.
On Sunday, a automobile-ramming attack in Sheikh Jarrah wounded seven police officers, police mentioned, adding that the attacker had been killed.
Police also mentioned “a number of suspects” had been arrested for the duration of clashes in a different east Jerusalem neighbourhood overnight Sunday to Monday.
Guterres warned the fighting could have far-reaching consequences if not stopped quickly.
“It has the potential to unleash an uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis and to further foster extremism, not only in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel, but in the region as a whole.”