Israel resumes air strikes after rockets fired from Gaza as
ceasefire ends
Gazans rush back to UN for shelter as Israel retaliates
against rockets fired before and after 72-hour truce expired.
As the truce formally ended at 8 a.m. local time, warning
sirens blared in several towns and cities in southern Israel. Within minutes,
rockets arced from Gaza into southern Israel, and Israeli warplanes and naval
vessels retaliated with strikes in the coastal strip.
A Palestinian official said Friday afternoon that his
delegation had remained in Cairo and was willing to resume negotiations on a
new cease-fire. An Israeli official said his government wouldn't negotiate
under fire.
By late afternoon, 45 missiles had been fired at Israel, 35
had hit and 3 were intercepted, the Israeli military said. In the exchange of
fire, two Israelis were wounded, it said. A 10-year-old Palestinian boy was
killed in an attack on a mosque in Gaza, health officials in the territory
said.
Smoke rises over Gaza City after an Israeli strike on
Friday, as Israel and Gaza militants resumed cross-border attacks after a
three-day truce expired.
There were also reports of injuries in Israel from rocket
strikes. At least one rocket appeared to have fallen short, landing in Gaza.
The Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told the AFP news agency:
"All the Palestinian factions, including Hamas, have agreed not to renew
the ceasefire because [Israel] is refusing to accommodate our demands."
An Israeli official said the prime minister, Binyamin
Netanyahu, had ordered the military to "retaliate forcefully to the Hamas
breach of the ceasefire". The Israeli army said it had targeted
"terror sites" across the Gaza Strip, and no Israeli soldiers had
entered the Palestinian territory.
It is unclear whether Hamas or other smaller factions in
Gaza, such as Islamic Jihad, fired the rockets at Israel.
In Gaza, tens of thousands of people who had returned to
their homes during the 72-hour ceasefire rushed back to the UN-run shelters
where many have been staying since the war began more than four weeks ago.
"This morning at 6 a.m. we came back here because knew
things were not reaching any good conclusion in Cairo," said Mahmoud
Masharawi, 33, who was at a U.N.-run shelter in Gaza with his wife and four
children. The family had camped out for two days near their home in the Sha'af
area east of Gaza City, trying to recover belongings and photos of his dead
brother.
Three-quarters of the 1,760 people living at the shelter
before the cease-fire went back home when the violence subsided, according to
its director. The population was already back to 1,600 by Friday afternoon.
They started arriving at 2 a.m., he said, and there was a big surge at 6 a.m.
The shelter, run by the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency, is normally a school for children aged six to nine. Families live in
its classrooms and under tents made of sheets and wood pitched on its grounds.
A spokesman for Unrwa said there were 171,240 people in 89 shelters it runs as
of 10:30 in the morning, only a modest increase from the night before. But he
said the overall number of displaced people in Gaza was far higher.
At one school, 800 people who had left in recent days
returned on Friday morning as news of the renewed fighting broke. One was Nidal
Sultan, 21, who had driven with six members of his family from the northern
town of Beit Lahiya.
"We were in the school on the first day of the
ceasefire and came back this morning," he said. "There were strikes
and shelling in the last hour or so. It's not safe, so we have to come to the
school however bad it is. We will stay now until the war stops."
UN worker Amal Zaqqout said the school was now holding more
displaced people than before the ceasefire. "We are very, very crowded. We
have 2,000 or more people living in corridors, in classrooms, everywhere. Thank
God we have not had any transmissible diseases, but that is definitely a
concern now," Zaqqout said.
Israeli Economics Minister Naftali Bennett said that Israel
mustn't allow rocket fire be used as a leverage in cease-fire talks. "This
is a moment of trial for Israeli deterrence in coming years. The response must
be stiff," Mr. Bennett said.
Hamas representatives had refused an extension of the
cease-fire unless steps were taken to lift Israel's economic embargo on Gaza.
Late Thursday, the movement's political wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it was
ready to fight again if its conditions weren't met.
It threatened to shut down air traffic at Ben Gurion
International Airport in Lod, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, unless Israel
agreed to the construction of a seaport in the coastal strip.
Before the ceasefire, more than a quarter of Gaza's
population of 1.8 million had been displaced. About half were in UN shelters,
and many of the rest stayed with relatives. About 65,000 are believed now to be
homeless.
Most people in Gaza blamed Israel for the renewal of
hostilities and said they supported the demands made by the Palestinian
delegation in Cairo during indirect negotiations brokered by the Egyptians in
recent days. Chief among those demands has been the lifting of the eight-year
blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt.
"The people's demands are humanitarian. Even if the
resistance agreed to drop the demands, the people would not agree. We are at
the point where life or death is the same thing for us," said Mohamed Eid,
40, who has been living in the grounds of the main hospital in Gaza since his
house was destroyed in fierce fighting in the east of the city 15 days ago.
But Faiza Abu Khalil, 37, said she was "very worried
and very scared" and still hoped for peace. Abu Khalil had returned to
Gaza from her home near Beit Lahiya on Thursday night when it appeared the
ceasefire would not hold.
No comments:
Post a Comment