Israel unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and bombarded the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict after days of…
Israel unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and bombarded the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict after days of violence over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site.
Later in the day, there were signs that both sides were trying to keep the hostilities in check. Fighting on Israel’s northern and southern borders subsided after dawn, and midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem passed peacefully. But a Palestinian shooting attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank killed two Israeli sisters just hours later — a grim reminder of the combustible situation.
The early morning Israeli strikes followed an unusually large rocket barrage fired at Israel from southern Lebanon — some of the heaviest and most serious cross-border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants.
The violence erupted after Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem earlier in the week, sparking unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world.
The Israeli strikes Friday seemed designed to avoid drawing in Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite group that Israel considers its most immediate threat. The Israeli military said its warplanes struck infrastructure belonging to Hamas militants that it accused of firing the nearly three dozen rockets that slammed into open areas and towns in northern Israel on Thursday.
Nonetheless, the Israeli military said it believed the Palestinian militants acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of southern Lebanon.
There were no reports of serious casualties, but several residents of the southern Lebanese town of Qalili, including Syrian refugees, said they were lightly wounded.
“I immediately gathered my wife and children and got them out of the house,” said Qalili resident Bilal Suleiman, who was jolted awake by the bombing.
A flock of sheep was killed when the Israeli missiles struck a field near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, according to an Associated Press photographer. Other airstrikes hit a bridge and a power transformer in nearby Maaliya and damaged an irrigation system providing water to orchards.
In the Gaza Strip, Israel’s military pounded what it said were weapons production sites and underground tunnels belonging to Hamas, the militant group ruling the Palestinian enclave. A children’s hospital in Gaza City was among sites sustaining damage, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
