Attacks reportedly strike Hamas infrastructure near southern Lebanon’s Sour and in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military launched air strikes on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip on Friday, hours after rockets were fired from Lebanon’s south into Israel on Thursday afternoon.
Local media said the strikes in Lebanon targeted infrastructure belonging to the Palestinian movement Hamas around al-Rashadieh, a seafront refugee camp just south of the city of Sour.
The nearby village of al-Kalila, where rockets were fired from earlier, was also reportedly hit. There are no known casualties so far.
Several areas in the Gaza Strip were also hit in different raids which started after midnight local time. There were also no reports of casualties, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Anti-ballistic missiles and rockets were fired from Gaza in response, triggering sirens in several Israeli towns and cities bordering the strip.
Earlier on Thursday, 34 rockets were launched from areas in south Lebanon towards Israel in the worst escalation between the two neighbours since the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war.
Israel blamed the barrage of rockets – which left two people slightly wounded – on Hamas, the Palestinian group which governs Gaza. Hamas denied knowledge of who was behind the attack.
Minutes before Israeli began bombing Gaza, the Joint Operations Room – which consists of the main armed factions in Gaza – said it was ready to respond to any aggression from Israel.
Israeli media had reported that the government was preparing to attack Gaza and Lebanon.
The Gaza strikes came while the Israeli security cabinet was still in discussions on how to respond to the rockets from Lebanon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the meeting that “Israel’s response, tonight and later, will exact a significant price from our enemies”.
However, he stopped short of announcing a military operation in Gaza or Lebanon.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Twitter: “The defence establishment is prepared with high readiness in all arenas… we will know how to act against any threat.”
Tensions have been running at a boilerplate amid repeated Israeli assaults on worshippers in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque this week. Videos from inside Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam, showed Israeli soldiers beating worshippers as women and children cried for help in the background.
The violence, during both the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover, has provoked outrage internationally.
Hezbollah, the Lebanese movement that control’s southern Lebanon and a foe of Israel, said on Wednesday it would support “all measures” taken by Palestinians in the wake of the violent Al-Aqsa raids.
The attacks also sparked protests in Palestinian cities and towns in the West Bank and within Israel, which were violently repressed by Israeli police.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was shot and moderately wounded on Friday in East Jerusalem, two days after another Israeli soldier was shot and wounded in Hebron.
Source: Middle East Eye. 7 April 2023