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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home