Hamas has started “a war against the state of Israel,” says the Israeli defense minister
Hamas has started “a war against the state of Israel,” said Yoav Galant, Israel’s defense minister. The rocket fire at several locations in the Gaza Strip began before 6:30 a.m. and continued until the early hours of the morning. The Israeli army sounded sirens in the south and center of the country and urged people to stay near emergency shelters.
For its part, the armed wing of Hamas, an armed Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, announced that it had launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, firing more than 5,000 rockets. “We have decided to put an end to all crimes committed by the occupation [Israël] “said the armed wing of the Al-Aqsa Brigades. The Israeli military said Hamas was behind a “combined attack, including rocket fire and terrorist immigration from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.” According to Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, a rocket struck the town of Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, where one man was slightly injured by shrapnel. A woman in her 60s was killed and fifteen other people were injured in southern Israel, Magen David Adom said.
In May, Israel launched an offensive against Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, triggering a five-day war between the Israeli army, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups in the territory that left thirty people dead, four Palestinians and one Israeli. More than a thousand rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel, most of which were intercepted by the Israeli air defense system. Israel, for its part, had increased air strikes on the small area.
Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, stayed out of this conflict. Since Hamas took control, Israel has imposed a strict blockade on the Gaza Strip. Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has increased since the start of the year, leaving at least 247 Palestinians, 33 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian dead, according to an AFP count of official sources. This number includes combatants and civilians on the Palestinian side and mainly civilians and three members of the Arab minority on the Israeli side.