The Israeli army announced Tuesday, May 11, that it had killed 15 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, an enclave against which it said it had carried out 130 strikes in response to rocket fire.
“We hit 130 military targets which mainly belong to Hamas”Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters. “We are in the initial phase of our response against military targets in Gaza, he added. We are ready for an escalation ”.
The authorities in Gaza, for their part, announced that the Israeli strikes in the enclave had killed 24 people, including 9 children, without knowing whether they were the same victims announced by Israel.
These raids were carried out in retaliation for rocket fire at around 6 p.m. Wednesday (5 p.m. in Paris) from the eastern and northern Gaza Strip, while Hamas had earlier threatened Israel with a military escalation if its forces did not withdraw from the Mosques Esplanade and the Sheikh-Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
According to a latest army report, 200 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel since Monday, more than 90% of which have been intercepted by the anti-missile shield dubbed “Iron Dome”. Many more rockets fell inside the Gaza Strip.
Material damage was observed in two localities hit by rockets about fifteen kilometers from Jerusalem. Israeli rescuers reported about 30 wounded, most of them in Ashkelon, an Israeli town very close to the Gaza Strip.
As more rockets were launched on Tuesday morning, the armed wing of Hamas vowed to make Ashkelon a “Hell” whether the Israeli strikes were causing civilian casualties in the enclave. “In the end, the Palestinians will win”, said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Five hundred and twenty Palestinians injured in Jerusalem on Monday
According to the Red Crescent, more than 520 Palestinians were injured on Monday at the Mosque Plaza, where tension has been extremely high for several days, as Israeli police reported at least 32 wounded in its ranks.
The violence coincided with Jerusalem Day, which marks, according to the Hebrew calendar, the capture of the eastern part, populated by Palestinians, of the Holy City by the Israeli army in 1967.
“Israel will react with force (…), whoever attacks will pay a heavy price. I tell you, citizens of Israel, the current conflict could last for some time ”, warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late Monday, saying that a ” Red line “ had been crossed by Hamas.
An impoverished enclave of two million inhabitants, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to an Israeli blockade since Hamas took power in 2007. Since then, Hamas and Israel have clashed in three wars (2008, 2012, 2014).
Faced with this escalation, a meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations (UN) was held on Monday, at the request of Tunisia, but member countries failed to agree on a joint declaration .
“The violence must stop, all parties must engage in de-escalation, reduce tensions, take concrete measures to calm things down”, insisted the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, condemned what he called “Terrorism” Israeli in Jerusalem. Mr. Erdogan thus asserted that he would do ” all that he [pourrait] to mobilize the world, especially the Muslim world, to put an end to Israeli terrorism and occupation ”.
