Dozens of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Wednesday, shortly after fresh Israeli strikes killed four people in the Palestinian territory, bringing the death toll to 19 since Tuesday.
This is the most significant escalation between Palestinian armed groups and Israel since August 2022.
Rocket warning sirens sounded in the Tel Aviv area, an AFP journalist noted, while others went off in the cities of Sderot, Ashdod and Ashkelon, according to the Israeli army . Emergency services did not report any injuries.
According to a senior Israeli security official, more than 60 rockets were fired in 45 minutes from Gaza, where journalists reported dozens of projectiles fired at Israeli soil.
Israel’s air defense system intercepted rockets over Ashkelon and elsewhere in southern Israel, AFP photographers found.
In Gaza, the Ministry of Health reported four deaths on Wednesday in Israeli raids.
The Israeli army said it targeted infrastructure for launching rockets and mortar shells belonging to Islamic Jihad, after targeting members of the movement in Khan Younis.
The day before, 15 people, including four children, had been killed by Israeli raids on Gaza, according to the local health ministry.
The Islamic Jihad, described as “terrorist” by Israel, the European Union and the United States, announced that several of its fighters had been killed.
Controlled since 2007 by Hamas, the Gaza Strip, a cramped territory undermined by poverty and unemployment where 2.3 million Palestinians have been crammed under an Israeli blockade for 16 years, has been the scene of several wars with Israel since 2008.
” Fear “
“Everyone is anxious and few people are on the streets. I have the impression that a war is going to break out, there is tension and fear, whether it is here or there (in Israel),” Monther Abdallah, a resident of Israel, told AFP. Gaza 50 years.
Islamic Jihad had promised Wednesday morning to the Israeli “enemy” a “response of the same magnitude as the crimes against our people and our fighters”.
Hamas claimed the rocket fire came from the “unified resistance” and was a response to “the massacres” by Israel.
In the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967, two members of the Islamic Jihad were killed Wednesday during an Israeli incursion near Jenin. They were members of the armed wing of the group.
The army for its part claimed that assailants in a car opened fire on soldiers in Qabatiyah, during an operation to arrest a “wanted suspect”, specifying that the soldiers returned fire with live ammunition, killing them.
“Escalation Scenario”
Around Gaza, residents of Israeli towns have taken refuge in shelters and schools are closed within a radius of 40 kilometers from the Palestinian territory, according to Israeli public radio.
Israel is preparing “for any escalation scenario, on more than one front,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Exchanges of fire had taken place between Gaza and Israel last week, triggered by the death in an Israeli prison of an official of the Islamic Jihad on hunger strike.
In August 2022, three days of clashes between Israel and Islamic Jihad had caused the death of 49 Palestinians, including 12 from Islamic Jihad according to the movement, and at least 19 children according to the UN. About 200 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, injuring three.
The new violence comes two years to the day after the start of an 11-day war between Israel and armed groups in Gaza.
Since the beginning of 2023, at least 129 Palestinians, 19 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed in violence linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an AFP tally from official Israeli and Palestinian sources.
These statistics include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, including minors, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, including minors, and three members of the Arab minority.