In the worst fighting in nearly two years between Israel and Gaza Strip militants, repeated salvos of Palestinian mortar fire were met Friday by Israeli airstrikes deep in the coastal enclave, as an escalation between the two sides reached a third worrisome day.
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The rocket fire came after several days of increased tensions in southern Israel, which began earlier in the week when Gaza Arab terrorists fired mortar shells at IDF soldiers who had uncovered a terror tunnel running from Gaza to Israeli territory.
A Palestinian rides a cart past a mural on March 30, 2016, in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
There were no casualties reported on Friday, but a woman was killed in a strike on her home in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis on Thursday.
On Wednesday, clashes erupted between the Israeli army and Palestinians militants on the Israel-Gaza borders. Israeli air strikes hit four Hamas sites in the east of Gaza City overnight on 05 May 2016. No Injuries were reported. It has begun a succession of cross-border mortar attacks in the vicinity, with a view to disrupting the detection work, and more importantly, to signal to Israel that Hamas is willing to risk war over its tunnel program.
Israeli tanks stationed on the border have also fired multiple times at what the army said were Hamas targets.
The incident also sparked rare local criticism of Hamas policies, with some Gaza residents accusing it of diverting its scarce electricity to its attack tunnel network against Israel instead.
On Thursday, health officials in Gaza said a 54-year-old woman was killed near Rafah by an Israeli tank shelling.
During the conflict, Palestinian resistance fighters relied on a system of subterranean tunnels to stage attacks on Israeli troops deployed near the border.
“We will not permit this aggression to continue and the enemy should not invoke any reason and leave the Strip immediately”, the group said.
The Israeli army admits it has operated inside Palestinian territory but said it was within 100 metres of the border, where it says it has operated since the 2014 war.
However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon are ignoring this opinion, just as they are ignoring the the security echelon’s recommendations to initiate a diplomatic process with the Palestinians.
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At least 16 mortar rounds were launched into Israel from Gaza this week – double the number recorded in the previous four months.
