Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad announced a truce around Gaza yesterday, after militants traded fire with Israel following the death in Israeli custody of a hunger striker from its ranks.
Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the UN intervened to broker a return to calm from 4am, sources in Islamic Jihad and fellow militant group Hamas told reporters.
Israel did not immediately confirm the agreement.
Photo: AFP
The Israeli army said the last warning sirens sounded near the Gaza border at about 5:30am.
Witnesses in the blockaded Palestinian territory told reporters that several rockets were fired at Israel at about that time.
“One round of confrontation has ended, but the march of resistance continues and will not stop,” Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Salmi said in a statement.
“Our brave fighters have proven their loyalty and commitment to defending their people,” he added.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh demanded that Israel return the hunger striker’s body to his family.
“We stress — and as we have informed all the mediators who intervened — the necessity of handing over the body of the martyr Khader Adnan to his patient family,” Haniyeh said in a statement.
Adnan, 45, from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, died early on Tuesday after an 87-day hunger strike following his arrest by Israel over ties to Islamic Jihad.
A string of high-profile hunger strikes during at least 13 stints in Israeli custody had turned Adnan into a national hero, and revitalized hunger striking as a form of protest among Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails.
From Tuesday morning, about 100 rockets were fired by militant groups from Gaza toward Israel, Islamic Jihad said.
In response, the Israeli army said it carried out a number of airstrikes on Gaza early yesterday, targeting “weapons manufacturing sites, outposts, military complexes and an underground terror tunnel” belonging to Hamas.
“It [Hamas] will face the consequences,” the army added.
Israel generally holds Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza, regardless of which militant group launched it. The Islamist group has controlled the territory since ousting loyalists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS