Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to restore security “on all fronts” after surging violence that included rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria, and two more deaths.
Netanyahu also reinstated the defense minister whose firing he announced last month.
Heavy clashes, shootings, rocket strikes and a car-ramming attack have marred a period when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan coincides with the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter.
Photo: Bloomberg
The latest casualties were a Palestinian teenager and a British-Israeli mother who succumbed to injuries from a West Bank shooting that earlier killed her two daughters.
The day after Israeli police on Wednesday last week stormed the prayer hall of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel.
The Israeli army said the attack was most likely carried out by Hamas.
Photo: Bloomberg
Israel then bombarded the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, targeting “terror infrastructures” it said belonged to Hamas.
“We will not allow the terrorist Hamas to establish itself in Lebanon,” by acting on “all fronts,” Netanyahu told a news conference.
The latest surge in violence began late last month after Netanyahu announced a “pause” for dialogue on judicial reform legislation, which caused divisions in his government.
Photo: Reuters
Among the political casualties was Yoav Gallant, whom the prime minister dismissed on March 26 after he called for a halt to the legislative process, citing national security concerns and threats by reserve military personnel not to report for duty.
Netanyahu said that he and Gallant had “difficult disputes,” but he had decided to put them in the past.
“Gallant remains in his post and we will continue to work together for the safety of the citizens of Israel,” he said.
In Tel Aviv, several hundred protesters took to the streets to denounce the government and condemn the prime minister’s speech, according to images broadcast by Israeli television.
In the latest shooting in the territory, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian, Mohammed Fayez Balhan, 15, and wounded two other people, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said, during what the army described as a raid to arrest a “terror suspect.”
The Israeli army said that its forces were operating in the Aqabat Jaber camp, the site of previous Israeli raids this year, near Jericho, where soldiers were seeking “to apprehend a terror suspect.”
The army said that troops responded with live fire after “suspects opened fire toward [soldiers], hurled explosive devices and Molotov cocktails.”
A suspect was taken in by security forces, it said.
The operation came as a Jerusalem hospital confirmed that a British-Israeli woman, Lucy (Leah) Dee, had died after being seriously injured in a shooting on Friday in the West Bank that killed her two daughters, aged 16 and 20.
Their car came under fire in the Jordan Valley, where Jericho is.
The families were residents of Efrat, a West Bank settlement.
British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affair James Cleverly wrote on Twitter that there could be “no justification” for the “senseless violence.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS