The worst violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip in nearly a year entered its second day on Saturday, as Israeli aircraft killed 15 militants, according to Palestinian health officials. Militants responded by firing nearly 100 rockets, seriously wounding an Israeli civilian.
The airstrikes and rocket attacks could drag the volatile area into broader conflict especially if a large number of civilians are killed on either side.
On Saturday, the low whooshing noise of militants firing rockets from border areas toward Israel was palpably heard inside Gaza City. Israeli drones hovered in the skies above.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian mourners marched through the streets in funeral processions. They carried slain militants in coffins, their bodies too torn up to be wrapped in cloth, as Muslim tradition dictates. Masked militants sprayed machine-gun fire above the mourners’ heads in angry grief.
“Revenge, revenge!” chanted the crowds.
On Israel’s southern border areas, residents were told to stay home Saturday and refrain from holding large outdoor events.
The flare-up began Friday with a strike on militant commander Zuhair al-Qaissi, who Israel said was planning an attack on the Jewish state from the nearby Egyptian Sinai peninsula. He was the leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small group best known for the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. Schalit was freed last year in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Friday’s attack was the highest profile killing Israel has undertaken against militants in the coastal strip in several months.
Gaza militants then unleashed a barrage of rockets toward Israel’s southern border communities. One rocket seriously wounded an Israeli civilian and sent families scattering into bomb shelters. So far, militants have fired 92 rockets. The military said its air defense systems intercepted about 25 rockets before they landed.
In comparison, Palestinian militants fired an estimated 50 rockets toward Israel in the three months preceding the flare up, a military spokesman said. He spoke anonymously in line with military regulations.
Egypt, which has helped arrange truces in the past, said Saturday it was trying to cobble together a ceasefire but hope seemed distant.
Palestinian militants said they would press on, accusing Israel of shattering the months of relative calm in the area.
“[We] won’t give this occupation a free truce while our leaders and heroes are being killed,” said Abu Mujahid, according to AP, spokesman for al-Qaissi’s group.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers condemned the Israeli strike but, pointedly, their militants did not fire rockets at Israel. Instead, they quietly allowed other Palestinian militants to unleash salvos. In previous flare-ups, Hamas has used such a strategy to allow Palestinian militants to burn off their anger, with an eye toward the exchange of strikes eventually quieting down.
Hamas hasn’t been eager to participate in rocket barrages since Israel conducted a punishing three-week military action against the militant group that ended in 2009. The air and ground assault killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and militants, and destroyed much of Hamas’s infrastructure.
Since then, Hamas has sought to shore up its Gaza rule and amass a better arsenal.
Israel’s military said Hamas, as the territory’s ruler, would “bear the consequences” for any attacks that initiated from Gaza.
Tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Palestinians are a routine occurrence along the Gaza border. But a flare-up of this intensity has been rare since the 2009 conflict.
In August, there was a flare-up when Israel assassinated al-Qaissi’s predecessor, Kamal al-Nairab. But this is the deadliest since April, when 11 Palestinians were killed, including four civilians. In April’s flare-up, the Israeli strikes came after Palestinian militants fired a rocket that hit a school bus, injuring the driver and badly wounding a 16-year-old boy, who later died of his injuries.
