(CNN) — Dozens of rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon on Thursday, the Israeli army reported, in a major escalation that comes amid tensions over Israeli police operations at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel subsequently attacked the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported and later reported that their warplanes hit two “terrorist” tunnels and two Hamas arms factories in Gaza, according to an IDF statement.
One tunnel was at Beit Hanoun and another tunnel was at Khan Yunis in Gaza. “In addition, two weapons factories belonging to the terrorist organization Hamas were attacked in the northern and central Gaza Strip,” the statement said.
There have been reports of the sound of warplanes and explosions hitting locations west and east of Gaza City, according to a journalist in the area, who also said there are attacks in northern Gaza in the Bet Hanoun area.
Smoke in Gaza City on April 6, 2023. Credit: MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images
Israel’s attacks continued for hours afterwards, also hitting areas in Lebanon. Three Israeli attacks hit an open area in the Tire region near El Qlaileh and El Rashidieh camps in south Lebanon, Hezbollah-backed Al-Manar news agency reported Friday local time. The Israeli planes appear to have exited Lebanese airspace, the report added.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fighter jets have attacked other Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, including a shaft leading to an underground weapons manufacturing complex, three other weapons manufacturing facilities and a terrorist tunnel owned by the group, the IDF said in a statement. “This attack significantly damages capabilities and prevents the terrorist organization Hamas in the Gaza Strip from acquiring more weapons,” the statement said.
“The IDF holds the terrorist organization Hamas responsible for all terrorist activities originating from the Gaza Strip and will have to bear the consequences of security breaches against Israel.”
Hamas, the militant group in Gaza, issued a statement following the Israeli army’s attacks on Gaza.
“We hold the occupation responsible for its aggression against Jerusalem and Gaza and call on our people’s armed forces and their factions to join open confrontation with the occupation in defense of our Jerusalem and Al Aqsa,” the group said.
Israel later said a drone from its forces struck heavy artillery in the northern Gaza Strip, which was used to fire shells into Israeli territory, the army said in a statement.
For its part, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a statement Friday local time that both Israel and Lebanon “do not want war.”
“The Head of Mission and Commander of UNIFIL, Major General Aroldo Lázaro, is speaking to the authorities on both sides,” the statement said, adding that “both sides have said they do not want war.”
“Early today, the IDF informed UNIFIL that they will begin an artillery response to yesterday’s rocket fire. Immediately afterwards, UNIFIL personnel heard loud explosions around the city of Tyre,” the peacekeeper said. “The actions of the last day are dangerous and risk serious escalation,” UNIFIL said.
More than 30 missiles launched
The Israel Defense Forces previously reported that about 34 rockets were fired from Lebanese territory into Israeli territory, most of which were intercepted but six fell on Israel. Later, in a statement Thursday night, the IDF said there was a new mortar attack from Lebanon targeting the Metula area along the border between the two countries, an area where they assured munitions remnants were found.
This is the largest attack of its kind since a war between the two countries in 2006 that killed about 1,200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis.
Israel said it would decide “the time and place” of its response to rocket fire, an IDF defense official told CNN.
After his office said it received “continuous updates on the security situation,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the country’s enemies “will pay for every act of aggression.”
“As for the aggression against us from the different scenarios, we will beat our enemies and they will pay a price for each act of aggression. Our enemies will rediscover that the citizens of Israel remain united and united in moments of TRUTH and this supports actions by the IDF and other security forces to protect our country and our citizens,” Netanyahu said in a public statement at the start of the Israel Security Cabinet meeting on Thursday .
Israel closed its northern airspace after the attack. No deaths were reported as of Thursday afternoon and it is still unknown which Lebanese group fired the rockets.
Videos posted to social media showed rockets hurtling across the sky in northern Israel and the sound of explosions in the distance.
The incident came a day after the leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, arrived in Beirut to meet with Hezbollah officials.
A member of the Israel Police Force’s bomb disposal unit inspects the remains of a projectile fired from Lebanon on Thursday in the northern city of Fassuta and intercepted by Israel. (Credit: Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty Images)
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was briefed on “the latest security developments on the country’s northern border,” according to the ministry.
For his part, the country’s President, Isaac Herzog, later stated that Israel “will act at all levels to ensure its security.” “The State of Israel will act at all levels to ensure its security and that of its citizens. I demand that the international community strongly condemns the blatant violation of international law and does not shake hands with terror and attacks on innocent people.”
Tensions in the region are running high after Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on two separate occasions on Wednesday as Palestinian worshipers were offering their prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
Pictures from inside the mosque showed Israeli agents beating people with their batons and rifle butts and then arresting hundreds of Palestinians. Israeli police said they entered the mosque after “hundreds of rioters” tried to barricade themselves inside.
The incident, widely condemned by the Arab and Muslim world, sparked retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.
In recent years there have been several small-scale rocket attacks from Lebanon, leading to retaliatory attacks by Israel. Few casualties were recorded in these incidents; The highest death toll in 2015 came in a shootout that killed two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper. Palestinian factions in Lebanon are believed to be behind these rocket attacks.
The 2006 conflict was the largest confrontation between Lebanon and Israel since 1982. Some 1,200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis were killed in a shootout that included a nationwide Israeli airstrike and a sea and air blockade. During the conflict, Hezbollah fired numerous rockets into Israeli territory.
Israel says the rockets were not fired by Hezbollah but by a Palestinian organization
The IDF defense official – who asked not to be named – told CNN Israel believes Palestinian groups were behind the rocket attack and that the IDF is “still calculating the whole dynamic of what happened so late.” .
The official added that Israel had not fired artillery into southern Lebanon in response to the rockets, contradicting a report by the country’s national news agency that Israeli artillery fire was aimed at the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Tyre.
IDF international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters Thursday that the rocket attack was carried out by a Palestinian organization without specifying which, but he assured that it was not Hezbollah.
“We know for sure that it is Palestinian fire. It could be Hamas, it could be Islamic Jihad trying to take him down, but it wasn’t Hezbollah,” Hecht told reporters at a briefing.
Hecht said the IDF assumes that “Hezbollah knew and Lebanon was also responsible.” But he insisted several times that the IDF viewed the attack as coming from a Palestinian source and that it did not represent an extension of the problem to actors outside of the direct Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The IDF has long been concerned about an escalation at the Lebanese border and organized a high-level seminar in spring 2022 to brief journalists and policymakers on the matter.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said the escalation in violence between Lebanon and Israel on Thursday was “extremely serious”.
UNIFIL also said it had ordered its personnel stationed at the border between the two countries to move into bomb shelters as “standard practice”.
IDF spokesman admits raids on al-Aqsa generated “negative energies”.
Hecht linked the rocket fire to the two Israeli raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque over the past two days, saying they created “very negative energies”.
“The context of the story begins two days ago on the Temple Mount with these very, very harsh images coming out of prayer at night,” Hecht said, using the Jewish name for the holy site in Jerusalem known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif is , or Noble Sanctuary.
“It creates very negative energies,” he admitted.
But he said Jerusalem was calming down compared to other areas of friction between Israel and the Palestinians, such as Gaza and the West Bank.
“If we look at Jerusalem now, the intensity decreases,” Hecht told reporters.
He said that Israel viewed the rocket fire from Lebanese territory as “a very serious event” and that IDF Chief of Staff Maj-Gen Herzi Halevi would brief Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the cabinet at 7:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET).
Lebanese Army finds rocket launchers and several missiles near Lebanese cities
The Lebanese Army said on Twitter that a unit had found “missile launchers and a number of missiles designed for launch” near the Lebanese cities of Zibqin and Qlaileh and was “currently working” to dismantle them.
The army confirmed on Twitter that multiple rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards Israel on Thursday.
The army did not say who fired the missiles.
“The Lebanese Army is patrolling the area in close coordination with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon,” he said.
Likewise, Lebanon agreed to work with the UN and take action to “restore calm and stability” in the south.
“(Lebanon) urges the international community to put pressure on Israel to stop the escalation,” Lebanon’s foreign ministry was quoted as saying in a statement, according to state agency NNA.
Jordan on rockets from Lebanon to Israel: “What we are seeing is a consequence of what happened in al-Aqsa”
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Thursday Israel is making regional cooperation “impossible” after Israeli police raided Al-Aqsa Mosque for a second time on Wednesday.
“We have always said that respecting the Palestinian right to freedom of religion, allowing people to pray freely and not storming Al-Aqsa will prevent violence from breaking out… Unfortunately, Israel has done exactly the opposite,” he said Safadi to Becky Anderson CNN.
“We are in a very dangerous moment,” said Safadi. “What we are seeing at the Lebanese border is obviously a consequence, a reaction to what we saw at (the) Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
“We are in this very moment, a dangerous moment that we have worked for months to avoid,” Safadi said.
The minister commented that there may be an opportunity to calm the situation, but that falls to Israel.
“If Israel doesn’t go along with the radical agenda advocated by some members of the government, maybe we have a chance to restore calm,” Safadi told CNN’s Becky Anderson.
“If not, I think the situation will escalate in a very dangerous way,” he added.
The Hashemite monarchy of Jordan has guarded the holy sites in Jerusalem since 1924 and sees itself as the guarantor of the religious rights of Muslims and Christians in Jerusalem.
Reactions from the USA and France
The White House is “extremely concerned by the ongoing violence and we urge all parties to avoid further escalation,” a spokesman for the National Security Council said on Thursday.
President Biden has been briefed, the spokesman said, and US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides and others are in regular contact with Israel about the situation.
“As the State Department reiterated yesterday, we are firmly committed to preserving the historical status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” the spokesman said.
In addition, the White House condemned the rockets fired against Israel: “Using Lebanon as a launch pad for rockets against Israel only endangers the Lebanese people and increases the possibility of further instability in the country.”
“Our commitment to Israel’s security remains unwavering. We recognize Israel’s legitimate right to defend its people and territory against all forms of aggression,” the spokesman added. “We urge all parties to avoid further escalation. As the President has made clear, both Israelis and Palestinians deserve to be safe and secure and to enjoy the same measures of security, prosperity and freedom.”
(Nides is married to Virginia Moseley, CNN’s executive vice president of writing.)
France
France condemned the “indiscriminate firing of rockets” into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, according to a statement by the French foreign ministry on Thursday.
“France condemns the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours.
“At this time of religious celebrations, France urges all parties to exercise maximum restraint and avoid any action that could fuel an escalation of violence.”
Ibrahim Dahman, Mia Alberti, Mostafa Salem, Ghazi Balkiz, Arlette Saenz, MJ Lee, Aurore Laborie, and Amir Tal contributed to this article.