JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas lurched further into a new round of fighting on Sunday, with both sides threatening to expand military action, as Israel said more than 500 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza had killed three people and the death toll on the Palestinian side climbed to nine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who held an emergency meeting with his security cabinet to discuss the situation, said Sunday that he had instructed the army to continue the “massive attacks against terrorist elements in the Gaza Strip.”
He also ordered the reinforcement of military units around the enclave. The Israeli military said it was ready for “offensive” action as rocket fire showed no signs of abating.
Meanwhile, as retaliatory airstrikes hit Gaza, militant factions put out a statement threatening to use longer range rockets to bombard areas more than 25 miles away from Gaza “if the aggression continues.”
“The resistance decided to respond to the crimes of the occupation in an unprecedented manner,” it said.
The flare-up, the most severe in months, looked set to derail Egyptian and international attempts to forge a long-term truce arrangement between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians try to extinguish a fire from a car following an Israeli airstrike on Sunday. (Reuters)
In Israel, rocket sirens blared Sunday, sending thousands of Israeli civilians — as far as 30 miles from Gaza — into bomb shelters. During one large barrage of rockets, a factory in the coastal city of Ashkelon was hit, killing two men and seriously injuring a third. Nearby, a rocket hit a man driving in his car, leaving him seriously injured.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli authorities said a 58-year-old man was killed when a rocket hit his home, also in Ashkelon. The three Israeli fatalities were the first from Gaza rocket fire since Israel and Hamas fought a deadly 50-day war in the summer of 2014.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said the country’s Iron Dome Defense system had been successful in intercepting a large number of the rockets and that many had fallen in open areas around communities and cities in southern Israel.
Israeli military jets struck more than 220 targets in Gaza, said Conricus. Among the targets were intelligence headquarters belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest militant faction in Gaza. The army also destroyed an underground attack tunnel crossing from Gaza into Israeli territory. From Gaza, there were reports that numerous residential buildings were destroyed, including one housing Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said four men in their twenties were killed Sunday in the airstrikes, increasing the death toll to eight after two men, a pregnant woman and a baby were killed Saturday.
A woman hugs an Israeli soldier while they take cover as they hear sirens warning of incoming rockets from Gaza on Sunday. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
Briefing reporters on Sunday, Conricus said that based on the army’s intelligence, it appeared that the pregnant mother and the baby were not killed by Israeli fire, however, but by Palestinian rocket fire. He said both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were coordinating attacks.
He said that all targets were military, and the houses of militants were counted as such. The military announced the targeted assassination of Hamed Khoudary, a 34-year-old it said was responsible for the transfer of cash from Iran to Hamas. Pictures from the scene showed his burning car in the street.
Netanyahu said Hamas bears responsibility for all attacks from Gaza.
“Hamas bears the responsibility not only for its own attacks and actions but also for the actions of Islamic Jihad, and it is paying a very heavy price for this,” he said.
[After more than 2,100 deaths, the Gaza war ends where it began]
The increase in violence comes in the midst of negotiations over a longer-term truce between Hamas and Israel, during which the militant group has tried to assert pressure with rocket fire and incendiary balloons. Hamas is attempting to secure an easing of Israeli restrictions on trade and movement, in return for a lull in violence.
U.N. peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov called for calm from both sides.
“Continuing down the current path of escalation will quickly undo what has been achieved and destroy the chances for long-time solutions to the crisis,” he said in a statement. “This endless cycle of violence must end, and efforts must accelerate to realize a political solution to the crisis in Gaza.”
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Israel would “respond forcefully and swiftly to any attack on the security of our people.”
In a joint statement, Gaza’s militant factions said the rocket fire was in response to the “targeting and assassination” of their militants a day earlier. “Our response will be tougher and larger and broader in the face of aggression,” they said in a statement.
The Israeli military reported on Friday that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a shooting incident along its border with Gaza. In response, Israel struck sites belonging to the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, killing two fighters.
Also on Friday, two Palestinian protesters were killed taking part in ongoing weekly demonstrations at the border fence with Israel, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
“It’s a reply to the Israeli targeting of peaceful civilians yesterday by Israeli snipers during the 58th Friday of Great March of Return,” said Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s bureau for international relations, referring to the weekly protests staged in Gaza since last year. “Also, to the procrastination policies of the occupation toward lifting the siege on Gaza.”
[Thousands gather in Gaza to mark anniversary of bloody border protests ]
Gazans have been holding weekly demonstrations along the border, protesting the dire humanitarian situation in the strip that worsens daily and the ongoing land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since Hamas forcibly took power in 2007. Egypt opens its border with Gaza only sporadically.
Hamas spokesman Abdullatif al-Qanoua said the group would continue to “respond to the crimes of the occupation” and “not allow the blood of our people to be shed.”
Musab al-Buraim, spokesman for Islamic Jihad, said in a short statement that it too was committed to “resistance.”
Representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad visited Egypt this past week to discuss the understandings reached with Israel to reduce tensions. The Egyptians have spent months trying to forge a long-term truce between the sides to bring calm and ease conditions for 2 million Gazans.
But Saturday’s unrest, disrupting the lives of so many Israeli citizens, could impact attempts by Netanyahu to form a coalition after being reelected for a fifth term. His last government began to unravel after a similar flare-up with Gaza, when then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned after calling for a tougher approach to the rocket fire.
[Netanyahu faces pressure for tougher Gaza response]
Standing down from his post in November, Liberman, head of the hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu party, said that agreeing to the cease-fire with Hamas was “surrendering to terror.” He proposed firmer military action against Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza, even if that risked a wider conflict.
In March, Netanyahu’s trip to Washington to meet with President Trump and speak at the annual AIPAC policy conference was cut short after a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into a house in central Israel.
Rocket fire and airstrikes similar to Saturday’s happen periodically.
In 2014, a 50-day deadly war between Israel and Hamas saw hundreds of rockets being fired into Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv, and massive Israeli aerial bombardments, killing more than 2,000 Palestinians. More than 70 Israelis and one foreign national were also killed.
There were concerns in Israel that unrest could disrupt preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest, an international singing event taking place in Tel Aviv this month. Contestants from across Europe are already in Israel to prepare for the event.
Balousha reported from Gaza. Morris reported from Tel Aviv.
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