2024-01-01 02:11:50
Several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip targeted Tel Aviv and its surroundings, as well as southern Israel, at the exact time of the New Year on Monday, according to AFP journalists on site.
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Air raid sirens sounded in the Israeli metropolis, and journalists in Tel Aviv could see rockets being intercepted by Israeli missile defense systems. People celebrating the New Year on a festive street took shelter to the sides, while others continued to party.
The attack on southern Israel took place at 12 a.m. local time (10 p.m. GMT) and that on Tel Aviv at 12:01 a.m. (10 p.m. GMT), according to AFP journalists.
“I was terrified, it was the first time I saw missiles, it’s terrifying, this is the life we live, it’s crazy,” Gabriel Zemelman, 26, told AFP in front of a bar in Tel Aviv where he had come to celebrate the New Year with his friends.
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 their social networks, claiming to have used M90 rockets in “response to the massacres of civilians” perpetrated by Israel.
The Israeli army confirmed the attack, without initially reporting any casualties or damage.
The rocket attacks come as Israel continues its relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip. The war was sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which left around 1,140 people dead, 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 people out of the approximately 250 kidnapped on October 7 in Israel are still being held hostage.
According to a new report announced Sunday by the Hamas Ministry of Health, 21,822 people, mostly women, adolescents and children, have been killed in the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory since the start of the war, and 56,451 injured.
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