Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers on Wednesday sought to contain the fallout from the worst fighting since a truce went into effect five months ago, but a flare-up later in the day threatened to unravel it anew.
Gaza militants pounded southern Israel with dozens of rockets to avenge a deadly Israeli raid. Neither side seems to have much to gain from a renewal of hostilities, and officials on both sides said they wanted to restore calm.
Late on Wednesday, however, an Israeli air strike killed one Palestinian militant in northern Gaza. The army said it was targeting a rocket launcher, which the Islamic Jihad militant group identified as its own.
PHOTO: AP
Islamic Jihad militants had earlier fired two rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot, a favorite target. One of its leaders, Khader Habib, declared the truce over.
Hamas, which agreed to the Egyptian-mediated truce, said Israel was breaching it.
“The occupier has a clear plan to destroy the truce and drown us in blood,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.
Before the June truce, near daily rocket barrages had severely disrupted life in southern border towns and Israel has not found a military solution to stop them. Retaliatory Israeli air strikes have killed scores of Palestinians in Gaza.
“We have no intention of violating the quiet,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on a tour of southern Israeli areas bordering Gaza. “But in any place where we need to thwart an action against Israeli soldiers and civilians, we will act.”
Hamas, on the other hand, needs the calm to strengthen its hold on Gaza, which it seized control of in June last year, and restore its military capabilities ahead of a potential future battle with Israel.
Barhoum said the group had fired deep into Israel on Wednesday to demonstrate the price of continued Israeli aggression. At the same time, he said Hamas had contacted Egyptian mediators to find ways of keeping the truce intact.
Clashes began late on Tuesday after the Israeli army burst into Gaza to destroy what it said was a tunnel being dug near the border to abduct Israeli troops. During the incursion, Hamas gunmen battled Israeli forces. One Hamas fighter was killed, prompting a wave of mortar fire at nearby Israeli targets.
An Israeli air strike then killed five Hamas militants preparing to fire mortar shells. Hamas responded with the barrage of rockets, including one that reached the city of Ashkelon, about 16km north of Gaza.
Israeli police said the rocket landed in an empty area. There were no reports of injuries or property damage. The army said four soldiers were wounded, two moderately, in the border fighting.
Thousands of Palestinian mourners rushed slain militants through the streets of the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, waving green Hamas flags and vowing revenge.
Gaza residents crowded into hospitals, as ambulances delivered the dead and injured. Grieving militants in military fatigues fired rounds of automatic weapon fire into the air to commemorate their fallen comrades.
Over Gaza City, the thudding sound of rockets being fired into Israel was audible. Unmanned Israeli aircraft, often used to target militants, buzzed in the sky overhead.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS