(AA) - The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, threatened Tuesday to strike Tel Aviv if Israel targeted civilian towers in Gaza.
"If the enemy persists and bombed civilian towers, then Tel Aviv will be on time with a more severe missile strike than what happened in Ashkelon," said group spokesman Abu Ubaida in a tweet.
Witnesses told Anadolu Agency that the Israeli army asked residents of the Hanadi residential tower in western Gaza City to vacate in preparation to strike and destroy the building.
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- A 13-storey residential tower in Gaza City has collapsed after Israeli airstrikes targeted the building.
There were no reports of casualties among the residents, who reportedly vacated the Hanadi tower before it was hit.
Video footage showed three plumes of thick smoke rising from the tower, its upper storeys still intact until it collapsed to the ground. The tower houses an office that is used by the political leadership of Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas.
Electricity in the area around the building went out after the collapse. Residents were using flashlights to search for personal belongings nearby.
- Shortly after the strike, Hamas, the group that controls the besieged Gaza strip, said it launched 130 rockets towards the Israeli city of Tel Aviv
Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassem Brigades, had warned it would retaliate over the strike on the tower near the coast, before confirming it had launched an attack on “Tel Aviv and its suburbs with 130 missiles”....
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Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday ordered more airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and called up reserve forces.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Maariv daily, Gantz made the decision following a meeting with his Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and top security officials in Israel to evaluate the situation in Gaza.
Israeli Channel 13 reported that the reservists will be deployed in areas around Gaza to reinforce security.
25 Palestinians were killed, including 9 children, and at least 800 others injured in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip and clashes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in recent hours.
The Israeli army said late Monday that it had launched a military operation, code-named "Guardian of the Walls", to respond to what it said rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
Tension moved from East Jerusalem to Gaza after Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza vowed to retaliate Israeli assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood if not halted.
Israel has unnecessarily and disproportionately used force against Palestinians protesting the possible eviction of Palestinian families from an East Jerusalem neighborhood, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday amid an uptick of deadly violence in the region.
ReplyDelete“Israeli Security Forces must allow and ensure the exercise of the right to freedoms of expression, association and assembly,” the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, said in a statement.
“No force should be used against those exercising their rights peacefully. When use of force is necessary, it should comply fully with international human rights standards. This includes the prohibition of unnecessary or disproportionate use of force,” he added.
“This has not been the case in the past days,” he continued.
The European Commission, meanwhile, called for the immediate de-escalation of the situation and condemned the rocket from Gaza on Israel.
Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz on Tuesday approved the mobilization of 5,000 reserve soldiers to face the mounting tension with militants in the Gaza Strip.
From the early hours of Monday, the Islamist Hamas group's armed wing, the Qasam Brigades, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired a barrage of over 250 rockets into Israel.
EFE