Hell has been unleashed in Gaza
Analysis by Ben Wedeman, CNN
Yet again, hell has been unleashed in the Gaza Strip, a small, crowded piece of land on the Mediterranean.
Analysis by Ben Wedeman, CNN
Yet again, hell has been unleashed in the Gaza Strip, a small, crowded piece of land on the Mediterranean.
© Ahmed Zakot /SOPA Images/Sipa USA/AP Smoke rises from a tower building destroyed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza City.
Overnight Tuesday, Israel launched multiple airstrikes hitting, among other things, the Hanadi Tower, a 13-floor tower on the seafront, which is home to 40 apartments.
The Israeli military claims the tower also contained offices affiliated with the ruling Hamas movement.
The strike, just after sunset Tuesday, brought down the entire building. It was preceded by what Israel calls a "knock on the roof," whereby drones fired small bombs at the tower as a warning of an impending attack. It was the first of three high-rise buildings in Gaza to be targeted by Israeli airstrikes in the last 24 hours.
Abdel Aziz Abu Shari'a lives in a building across the street, which has been left inhabitable by the nearby rocket attack. When they heard an attack was coming, he says he ran downstairs with his wife, his daughter and their cat.
"We waited in the street for four hours, and then in the evening went back and found everything destroyed," he told CNN. "There's nothing left."
Since Monday evening, Israel's aerial operation has left more than 60 Gazans dead, militants among them, but more civilians, according to figures from the Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry. More than a dozen of were children. Additionally, more than 365 others have been injured in the fighting, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said at least 15 of the deaths were Hamas militants.
"We heard an explosion, two rockets, one after another," resident Rifa'at ar-Rifi told CNN. "I didn't know where to hide."
When he reached his home in Gaza City, horror awaited him. "I found my 18-year-old grand-daughter dead, my son injured in the head, and his daughter with a broken leg."
The Palestinian health ministry spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qidra, said Wednesday that residents in Gaza were in a "state of panic" and accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilian homes and crowded residential neighborhoods. Forty-three percent of the victims in Gaza were women and children, Al-Qidra also said.
The Israeli military has said it does everything it can to minimize civilian casualties when it is carrying out attacks
Overnight Tuesday, Israel launched multiple airstrikes hitting, among other things, the Hanadi Tower, a 13-floor tower on the seafront, which is home to 40 apartments.
The Israeli military claims the tower also contained offices affiliated with the ruling Hamas movement.
The strike, just after sunset Tuesday, brought down the entire building. It was preceded by what Israel calls a "knock on the roof," whereby drones fired small bombs at the tower as a warning of an impending attack. It was the first of three high-rise buildings in Gaza to be targeted by Israeli airstrikes in the last 24 hours.
Abdel Aziz Abu Shari'a lives in a building across the street, which has been left inhabitable by the nearby rocket attack. When they heard an attack was coming, he says he ran downstairs with his wife, his daughter and their cat.
"We waited in the street for four hours, and then in the evening went back and found everything destroyed," he told CNN. "There's nothing left."
Since Monday evening, Israel's aerial operation has left more than 60 Gazans dead, militants among them, but more civilians, according to figures from the Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry. More than a dozen of were children. Additionally, more than 365 others have been injured in the fighting, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said at least 15 of the deaths were Hamas militants.
"We heard an explosion, two rockets, one after another," resident Rifa'at ar-Rifi told CNN. "I didn't know where to hide."
When he reached his home in Gaza City, horror awaited him. "I found my 18-year-old grand-daughter dead, my son injured in the head, and his daughter with a broken leg."
The Palestinian health ministry spokesman in Gaza, Ashraf al-Qidra, said Wednesday that residents in Gaza were in a "state of panic" and accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilian homes and crowded residential neighborhoods. Forty-three percent of the victims in Gaza were women and children, Al-Qidra also said.
The Israeli military has said it does everything it can to minimize civilian casualties when it is carrying out attacks
.
© Mohammed Talatene/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images People inspect the site of the collapsed Al-Shorouk Tower building after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike, amid the escalating flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Hamas retaliated for the strike on the Hanadi Tower, firing more than a hundred rockets toward Tel Aviv. One struck a bus in the town of Holon, south of the city. The barrage prompted authorities to briefly shut nearby Ben Gurion International Airport.
Militants in Gaza have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel since the latest flareup began Monday afternoon, killing at least seven Israelis and injuring more than 200 others, the Israeli military said Wednesday.
Gaza covers around 140 square miles, roughly the size of Detroit -- but with almost two million people, it has nearly three times the population of the US city. Eighty percent of the population traces their roots back to what is today Israel. And as a result of the airstrikes, some have been made homeless yet again.
The territory is governed by Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group, considered a terror organization by the US, Britain, the European Union and others.
Cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade of Gaza's land, air and sea dating back to 2007, many of Gaza's inhabitants are dependent on foreign aid to survive. Israel has placed heavy restrictions on the freedom of civilian movement and controls the importation of basic goods into the narrow coastal strip. The result is that the economy here is in dire shape: Unemployment is high. The water non-potable. Life is hard. Hope in short supply.
The United Nations has repeatedly criticized the blockade of Gaza over the years. On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland called on leaders of both sides to curb the violence, adding that the "cost of war in Gaza is devastating and is being paid by ordinary people."
This is by far the most serious outbreak of fighting between Israel and Gaza since 2014, when the fighting killed more than 2,200 Gazans, approximately half of them civilians, according to a 2015 UN report.
Both Israel and the militant factions in Gaza show little inclination to de-escalate. Israel has mobilized reserves and is sending heavy armor to the Gaza area. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have put out videos showing their rocket teams at work.
Each is determined to gouge out an eye for an eye.
Hamas retaliated for the strike on the Hanadi Tower, firing more than a hundred rockets toward Tel Aviv. One struck a bus in the town of Holon, south of the city. The barrage prompted authorities to briefly shut nearby Ben Gurion International Airport.
Militants in Gaza have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel since the latest flareup began Monday afternoon, killing at least seven Israelis and injuring more than 200 others, the Israeli military said Wednesday.
Gaza covers around 140 square miles, roughly the size of Detroit -- but with almost two million people, it has nearly three times the population of the US city. Eighty percent of the population traces their roots back to what is today Israel. And as a result of the airstrikes, some have been made homeless yet again.
The territory is governed by Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamic group, considered a terror organization by the US, Britain, the European Union and others.
Cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade of Gaza's land, air and sea dating back to 2007, many of Gaza's inhabitants are dependent on foreign aid to survive. Israel has placed heavy restrictions on the freedom of civilian movement and controls the importation of basic goods into the narrow coastal strip. The result is that the economy here is in dire shape: Unemployment is high. The water non-potable. Life is hard. Hope in short supply.
The United Nations has repeatedly criticized the blockade of Gaza over the years. On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland called on leaders of both sides to curb the violence, adding that the "cost of war in Gaza is devastating and is being paid by ordinary people."
This is by far the most serious outbreak of fighting between Israel and Gaza since 2014, when the fighting killed more than 2,200 Gazans, approximately half of them civilians, according to a 2015 UN report.
Both Israel and the militant factions in Gaza show little inclination to de-escalate. Israel has mobilized reserves and is sending heavy armor to the Gaza area. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have put out videos showing their rocket teams at work.
Each is determined to gouge out an eye for an eye.
\
© Haitham IMad/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Rockets fired from Gaza fly towards Israel, as seen from Gaza City, on Wednesday.
Israeli strike brings down most of Gaza high-rise building
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes toppled most of a massive high-rise building in central Gaza City on Wednesday, in the latest escalation in Israel-Hamas fighting.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes toppled most of a massive high-rise building in central Gaza City on Wednesday, in the latest escalation in Israel-Hamas fighting.
© Provided by The Canadian Press
The collapse was broadcast on Israeli TV channels, with commentators predicting Gaza militants would respond with a rocket barrage.
Hamas militants fired scores of rockets at the Tel Aviv metro area on Tuesday, after airstrikes toppled another Gaza high-rise.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Rockets streamed out of Gaza and Israel pounded the territory with airstrikes Wednesday as the most severe outbreak of violence since a 2014 war took on many hallmarks of that devastating 50-day conflict, with dozens killed and no resolution in sight.
Palls of gray smoke rose in Gaza, as Israeli airstrikes levelled two apartment towers and hammered the militant group’s multiple security installations, destroying the central police compound.
In Israel, barrages of hundreds of rockets fired by Gaza’s Hamas rulers and other militants at times overwhelmed missile defenses and brought air raid sirens and explosions echoing across Tel Aviv, Israel’s biggest metropolitan area, and other cities.
The death toll in Gaza rose to 48 Palestinians, including 14 children and three women, according to the Health Ministry. More than 300 people have been wounded, including 86 children and 39 women. Six Israelis, including a soldier, three women and a child, were killed, and dozens of people were wounded.
While the rapidly escalating conflict has brought images familiar from 2014 Israel-Hamas war, the past day has also seen a startling new factor: A burst of fury from Israel’s Palestinian citizens in support of those living in the territories and against Israel’s recent response to unrest in Jerusalem and its current operations in Gaza.
Amid those protests, communal violence erupted in several mixed Jewish-Arab Israeli cities, including the burning of a Jewish-owned restaurant and a synagogue, the fatal shooting of an Arab man and attacks on Arab-owned cars. In a rare move that highlighted the tensions, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Wednesday ordered units of border guards deployed to help police keep order.
There was no sign that either side is willing to back down. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to expand the offensive, saying “this will take time.” Hamas has called for a full-scale intifada, or uprising. The last such uprising began in 2000 and lasted more than five years.
The latest eruption of violence began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed police tactics during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers ignited protests and clashes with police. A focal point was the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a site sacred to Jews and Muslims.
Late Monday, Hamas, claiming to be “defending Jerusalem,” launched a barrage of rockets at the city in a major escalation.
The Israeli military said militants have fired more 1,050 rockets since the conflict began, with 200 of them falling short and landing inside Gaza. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said two infantry brigades were sent to the area, indicating preparations for a possible ground invasion.
The army also confirmed that a soldier — Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, 21 — was killed in an anti-tank missile attack near the Gaza Strip, the first Israeli military death in the fighting.
Israel has struck hundreds of targets in the Gaza Strip, where 2 million Palestinians have lived under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas took power in 2007.
The fiercest attack was a set of airstrikes that brought down an entire 12-story building. The building housed important Hamas offices, as well as some businesses. Israel fired a series of warning shots before demolishing the building, allowing people to flee and there were no casualties.
Israeli aircraft heavily damaged another Gaza City building early Wednesday. Israel said the nine-story building housed Hamas intelligence offices and the group’s command responsible for planning attacks in the occupied West Bank; it also had residential apartments, medical companies and a dental clinic. A drone fired five warning rockets before the bombing.
Fighter jets struck the building again after journalists and rescuers had gathered around. There was no immediate word on casualties. The high-rise stood 200 meters (650 feet) away from the AP bureau in Gaza City, and smoke and debris reached the office.
In another strike, Hamas' Gaza City commander was killed Wednesday, the group confirmed, making him the highest-ranking military figure in the group to be killed by Israel since the 2014 war. Israel’s internal security agency said that a series of airstrikes had killed Bassem Issa and several other senior militants.
At one point Wednesday, Hamas fired 100 rockets at the Israeli desert town of Beersheba in what it said was retaliation for some of the strikes.
Samah Haboub, a mother of four in Gaza, said she was thrown across her bedroom in a “moment of horror” by an airstrike on an apartment tower next door. She and her children, aged 3 to 14, ran down the stairway of their apartment block along with other residents, many of them screaming and crying.
“There is almost no safe place in Gaza,” she said.
One strike hit a taxi in Gaza City, killing a man, woman and driver insider, and a second strike killed two men nearby on the street, witnesses who brought the bodies told the AP at the hospital. Several other bystanders, including a woman, were wounded.
In the Israeli city of Lod, a 52-year-old man and his 16-year-old daughter, reportedly Arab citizens of Israel, were killed early Wednesday when a rocket from Gaza hit the courtyard of their home.
The Jerusalem turmoil and the ensuing battle come at a time when the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process is virtually non-existent.
It has been seven years since the two sides held formal negotiations. Israel’s political scene pays little attention, and the peace process was hardly an issue in the country’s string of recent elections. Arab nations, including several that recently reached normalization deals with Israel, rarely push for any resolution.
The result has left the nearly 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem living in a limbo — caught among Israeli occupation, accelerated Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, a weak Palestinian Authority that recently canceled elections, and Hamas rule and the blockade that are impoverishing Gaza.
With the protests in Arab communities, the unrest in Jerusalem has also spread across Israel.
“An intifada erupted in Lod, you have to bring in the army,” the central Israeli city’s mayor, Yair Revivo, said. Lod saw heavy clashes after thousands of mourners joined a funeral for an Arab man killed the previous night, the suspect a Jewish gunman.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized power in Gaza from rival Palestinian forces. The conflicts ended after regional and international powers convinced both sides to accept an informal truce.
Once again, diplomats are seeking to intervene, with Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations working to deliver a cease-fire.
The U.N. Security Council also planned to hold its second closed emergency meeting in three days Wednesday on the escalating violence.
Israel faced heavy criticism over the bombing of residential buildings in Gaza during the 2014 war, one of several tactics that are now the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes. Israel is not a member of the court and has rejected the probe.
In a brief statement, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she had noted “with great concern” the escalation of violence and “the possible commission of crimes under the Rome Statute” that established the court.
Conricus, the military spokesman, said Israeli forces have strict rules of engagement, follow international laws on armed conflict and are trying to minimize civilian casualties.
But Israel has said it has no choice because Hamas fires rockets from residential areas. Hamas has also come under international criticism over its indiscriminate rocket fire at Israeli population centers.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem and Karin Laub in the West Bank contributed.
Fares Akram And Joseph Krauss, The Associated Press
The collapse was broadcast on Israeli TV channels, with commentators predicting Gaza militants would respond with a rocket barrage.
Hamas militants fired scores of rockets at the Tel Aviv metro area on Tuesday, after airstrikes toppled another Gaza high-rise.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Rockets streamed out of Gaza and Israel pounded the territory with airstrikes Wednesday as the most severe outbreak of violence since a 2014 war took on many hallmarks of that devastating 50-day conflict, with dozens killed and no resolution in sight.
Palls of gray smoke rose in Gaza, as Israeli airstrikes levelled two apartment towers and hammered the militant group’s multiple security installations, destroying the central police compound.
In Israel, barrages of hundreds of rockets fired by Gaza’s Hamas rulers and other militants at times overwhelmed missile defenses and brought air raid sirens and explosions echoing across Tel Aviv, Israel’s biggest metropolitan area, and other cities.
The death toll in Gaza rose to 48 Palestinians, including 14 children and three women, according to the Health Ministry. More than 300 people have been wounded, including 86 children and 39 women. Six Israelis, including a soldier, three women and a child, were killed, and dozens of people were wounded.
While the rapidly escalating conflict has brought images familiar from 2014 Israel-Hamas war, the past day has also seen a startling new factor: A burst of fury from Israel’s Palestinian citizens in support of those living in the territories and against Israel’s recent response to unrest in Jerusalem and its current operations in Gaza.
Amid those protests, communal violence erupted in several mixed Jewish-Arab Israeli cities, including the burning of a Jewish-owned restaurant and a synagogue, the fatal shooting of an Arab man and attacks on Arab-owned cars. In a rare move that highlighted the tensions, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Wednesday ordered units of border guards deployed to help police keep order.
There was no sign that either side is willing to back down. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to expand the offensive, saying “this will take time.” Hamas has called for a full-scale intifada, or uprising. The last such uprising began in 2000 and lasted more than five years.
The latest eruption of violence began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed police tactics during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers ignited protests and clashes with police. A focal point was the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a site sacred to Jews and Muslims.
Late Monday, Hamas, claiming to be “defending Jerusalem,” launched a barrage of rockets at the city in a major escalation.
The Israeli military said militants have fired more 1,050 rockets since the conflict began, with 200 of them falling short and landing inside Gaza. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said two infantry brigades were sent to the area, indicating preparations for a possible ground invasion.
The army also confirmed that a soldier — Staff Sgt. Omer Tabib, 21 — was killed in an anti-tank missile attack near the Gaza Strip, the first Israeli military death in the fighting.
Israel has struck hundreds of targets in the Gaza Strip, where 2 million Palestinians have lived under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas took power in 2007.
The fiercest attack was a set of airstrikes that brought down an entire 12-story building. The building housed important Hamas offices, as well as some businesses. Israel fired a series of warning shots before demolishing the building, allowing people to flee and there were no casualties.
Israeli aircraft heavily damaged another Gaza City building early Wednesday. Israel said the nine-story building housed Hamas intelligence offices and the group’s command responsible for planning attacks in the occupied West Bank; it also had residential apartments, medical companies and a dental clinic. A drone fired five warning rockets before the bombing.
Fighter jets struck the building again after journalists and rescuers had gathered around. There was no immediate word on casualties. The high-rise stood 200 meters (650 feet) away from the AP bureau in Gaza City, and smoke and debris reached the office.
In another strike, Hamas' Gaza City commander was killed Wednesday, the group confirmed, making him the highest-ranking military figure in the group to be killed by Israel since the 2014 war. Israel’s internal security agency said that a series of airstrikes had killed Bassem Issa and several other senior militants.
At one point Wednesday, Hamas fired 100 rockets at the Israeli desert town of Beersheba in what it said was retaliation for some of the strikes.
Samah Haboub, a mother of four in Gaza, said she was thrown across her bedroom in a “moment of horror” by an airstrike on an apartment tower next door. She and her children, aged 3 to 14, ran down the stairway of their apartment block along with other residents, many of them screaming and crying.
“There is almost no safe place in Gaza,” she said.
One strike hit a taxi in Gaza City, killing a man, woman and driver insider, and a second strike killed two men nearby on the street, witnesses who brought the bodies told the AP at the hospital. Several other bystanders, including a woman, were wounded.
In the Israeli city of Lod, a 52-year-old man and his 16-year-old daughter, reportedly Arab citizens of Israel, were killed early Wednesday when a rocket from Gaza hit the courtyard of their home.
The Jerusalem turmoil and the ensuing battle come at a time when the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process is virtually non-existent.
It has been seven years since the two sides held formal negotiations. Israel’s political scene pays little attention, and the peace process was hardly an issue in the country’s string of recent elections. Arab nations, including several that recently reached normalization deals with Israel, rarely push for any resolution.
The result has left the nearly 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem living in a limbo — caught among Israeli occupation, accelerated Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, a weak Palestinian Authority that recently canceled elections, and Hamas rule and the blockade that are impoverishing Gaza.
With the protests in Arab communities, the unrest in Jerusalem has also spread across Israel.
“An intifada erupted in Lod, you have to bring in the army,” the central Israeli city’s mayor, Yair Revivo, said. Lod saw heavy clashes after thousands of mourners joined a funeral for an Arab man killed the previous night, the suspect a Jewish gunman.
Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized power in Gaza from rival Palestinian forces. The conflicts ended after regional and international powers convinced both sides to accept an informal truce.
Once again, diplomats are seeking to intervene, with Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations working to deliver a cease-fire.
The U.N. Security Council also planned to hold its second closed emergency meeting in three days Wednesday on the escalating violence.
Israel faced heavy criticism over the bombing of residential buildings in Gaza during the 2014 war, one of several tactics that are now the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes. Israel is not a member of the court and has rejected the probe.
In a brief statement, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she had noted “with great concern” the escalation of violence and “the possible commission of crimes under the Rome Statute” that established the court.
Conricus, the military spokesman, said Israeli forces have strict rules of engagement, follow international laws on armed conflict and are trying to minimize civilian casualties.
But Israel has said it has no choice because Hamas fires rockets from residential areas. Hamas has also come under international criticism over its indiscriminate rocket fire at Israeli population centers.
___
Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Ilan Ben Zion in Jerusalem and Karin Laub in the West Bank contributed.
Fares Akram And Joseph Krauss, The Associated Press
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