MAHMUD HAMS / AFP
Israeli Iron Dome intercepts rockets from Gaza (illustrative image)
INTERNATIONAL – It was exactly midnight in Israel. But instead of fireworks, this Monday, January 1st, rockets from Gaza lit up the sky over Tel Aviv and the surrounding area, exactly at the moment of the transition to the new year 2024, AFP journalists on site.
Air warning sirens wailed in the Israeli metropolis, and journalists in Tel Aviv were able to observe how the rockets were intercepted by Israeli missile defense systems. People celebrating the New Year on a festive street took shelter on the roadsides as others continued celebrating.
According to AFP journalists, the attack on southern Israel occurred at 00:00 local time and the one on Tel Aviv at 00:01. “I was scared, it was the first time I saw rockets, it's terrifying, this is the life we lead, it's crazy,” Gabriel Zemelman, 26, told AFP outside a bar in the city, in He had come to celebrate the New Year with his friends.
Hamas claims responsibility for the attacks
The Israeli army confirmed the attack without initially reporting any casualties or damage. “New year, same Hamas terrorism,” wrote the Israel Defense Forces account on X (formerly Twitter). Israel, like the European Union and the United States, considers Hamas a terrorist organization. The army's message is accompanied by a video of these shots.
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“Hamas terrorists are bombing Israeli cities indiscriminately at midnight at the beginning of the new year,” an Israeli army spokesman also wrote on the same social network, calling for the Islamist group to be eliminated, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regularly does.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, claimed responsibility for the two attacks in a video posted on its social networks, claiming that M90 rockets were used in “response to the massacres of civilians carried out by Israel.” to have .
More than 20,000 dead
The war was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” the Palestinian movement and relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip, where 129 of the approximately 250 people kidnapped in Israel on October 7 are still being held hostage. NGOs warn that the health situation on site is becoming increasingly catastrophic.
According to a new report released by the Hamas Health Ministry on Sunday, 21,822 people, mostly women, teenagers and children, have been killed and 56,451 injured in the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory since the war began.
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