2023-10-07 07:29:26
Dozens of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel on Saturday morning, October 7, ending a truce generally respected since the end of a five-day war in May. The armed wing of Hamas announced that it had launched the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.
Published on: 07/10/2023 – 07:29Modified on: 07/10/2023 – 07:57
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« We have decided to put an end to all the crimes of the occupation » (Israel, Editor’s note), and “ more than 5,000 rockets » have been fired since this morning, declares Mohammad Deif, commander of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, in an audio recording broadcast by Al-Aqsa TV, the television channel of Hamas, the Islamist movement in power in Gaza.
The shooting, starting from several locations in the Gaza Strip, began before 6:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. UT) and continued nearly forty-five minutes later.
In Israel, warning sirens sounded in several towns around the Palestinian territory, also in Jerusalem but also deeper in the territory, to the north and east, according to the army.
A rocket fell on the town of Yavne, south of Tel Aviv, where a man was slightly injured by shrapnel, according to Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. A woman in her sixties was killed “ by a direct hit “, and 15 other people were injured in southern Israel, says Magen David Adom.
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The Israeli army reported the infiltration of “ an unknown number of terrorists » into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. “ Residents of areas surrounding the Gaza Strip asked to stay at home », Adds the army.
In a parking lot in Ashkelon, southern Israel, after a rocket attack from Gaza, Saturday, October 7, 2023. AP – Tsafrir Abayov
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 this territory, having cost the lives of 34 Palestinians and one Israeli woman.
More than a thousand rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, most of them intercepted by the Israeli air defense system. Israel, for its part, had increased airstrikes on the small territory.
Hamas, which took power in Gaza in 2007, had stayed away from this conflict.
► More information to come…
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