JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and continued bombing 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 Friday, there were signs that both sides were attempting to contain hostilities. Fighting on Israel’s northern and southern borders subsided after sunrise, and midday prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque were peaceful. But a Palestinian shooting attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank just hours later killed two women near an Israeli settlement – a grim reminder of the volatile situation.
The early-morning Israeli attacks followed an unusually large barrage of rockets fired at Israel from southern Lebanon – in what analysts called the worst cross-border violence since Israel’s war with Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in 2006. The violence erupted after Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem earlier this week, sparking unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world.
The Israeli attacks appeared designed to avoid attracting the Iran-backed Shia group, which sees Israel as its most immediate threat. The Israeli military said its warplanes hit the infrastructure of Palestinian militants accused of firing the nearly three dozen rockets that slammed into open areas and northern Israeli towns on Thursday. Nonetheless, the Israeli military said it believed the Palestinian militants were acting with the knowledge of Hezbollah, which controls much of southern Lebanon.
There were no reports of serious casualties, but several residents of the southern Lebanese city of Qalili, including Syrian refugees, said they suffered minor injuries.
“I immediately rounded up my wife and children and took them out of the house,” said Bilal Suleiman, a Qalili resident who was jolted by the bombing.
A flock of sheep was also killed when the Israeli missiles hit an open field near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, according to an Associated Press photographer. Other airstrikes hit a bridge and transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and damaged an irrigation system that supplied water to orchards in the area.
In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military allegedly bombed weapons manufacturing plants and underground tunnels of Hamas, the militant group that rules the Palestinian enclave. Local residents inspected the damage caused by Israeli attacks – including a children’s hospital in Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
After the retaliatory strikes, Israelis living on the southern border returned home from bomb shelters. Most rockets that managed to cross Israeli territory hit open areas, but one landed in the nearby town of Sderot and sent shrapnel into a house.
There were no reports of casualties on either side of the southern border.
The Israeli military said everyone wants to avoid a full-blown conflict. “Silence is met with silence,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli military.
Tensions in the region remained high. In the West Bank, a Palestinian shooting attack near an Israeli settlement in the Jordan Valley killed two sisters in their 20s and seriously injured their 45-year-old mother, Israeli medics and officials said. The three victims are residents of the Israeli settlement of Efrat near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, said Oded Revivi, the settlement’s mayor. The girls’ father was driving in another car behind his wife and daughters and witnessed the attack, Revivi added. Medics said they dragged the unconscious women from the crashed car, which appeared to have been pushed off the road.
The Israeli military said it was looking for those behind the attack and set up roadblocks in the area. No militant group immediately took responsibility. But Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem welcomed the attack “in retaliation for crimes committed by Israel in the West Bank and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Jerusalem’s holy site of Al-Aqsa, a powder keg for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, sits atop a hill sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In 2021, an escalation, also sparked by clashes in the terrified compound, led to an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas rulers in Gaza.
Over 130,000 believers flocked to the site for midday prayers on Friday, which ended without incident. Before morning prayers, chaos broke out at one of the entrances to the Esplanade when Israeli police armed with batons charged a crowd of Palestinian believers who chanted slogans praising Hamas as they tried to force their way onto the compound. According to videos, the people leaving the prayers staged a large-scale protest in the limestone courtyard an hour later, with Palestinians raising their fists and shouting against Israel. Israeli police entered the compound, stoking tensions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Police did not comment on the earlier beatings but said security forces entered the sacred compound after prayers in response to “masked suspects” who threw stones at officers at one of the gates. Israeli authorities control access to the area, but the site is managed by Islamic and Jordanian officials.
The unrest comes at a sensitive time for Jerusalem’s Old City, which on Friday was teeming with pilgrims from around the world. Devout Christians walked the path Jesus is said to have walked on Good Friday, Jews celebrated the week-long Passover, and Muslims prayed and fasted for Ramadan.
The current round of violence began Wednesday after Israeli police twice raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque — in one case violently beating Palestinians, who responded with stones and firecrackers. This led to rocket fire from Gaza on Thursday and, in a significant and unusual escalation, barrage from southern Lebanon and Israeli retaliation.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said on Friday it had directed the country’s mission to the United Nations in New York to file a complaint with the UN Security Council against “deliberate Israeli bombing and aggression” in the south, which it described as “a flagrant violation by Lebanon.” “condemned sovereignty.”
Even as a tense calm settled along the Lebanese and Gaza borders, the West Bank remained volatile. Violence has reached new heights in the territory in recent months, with Palestinian health officials reporting the start of 2023 as the deadliest for Palestinians in two decades.
According to a tally by the Associated Press, nearly 90 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the beginning of the year. During that time, 16 people were killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis – all but one of them civilians. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone-throwing youth protesting police crackdowns and people not involved in the clashes have also been killed.
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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.