JERUSALEM (AFP) – Militants fired ferocious rockets from Lebanon into Israel , the Israeli military said, driving people across Israel’s northern border into air raid shelters, injuring at least one person and killing Israel. Tensions rose in the region as people celebrated the Jewish Passover holiday.
The Israeli military said 34 rockets were fired across the border and 25 were shot down by the Iron Dome air defense system. Another five fell into Israeli territory and the rest are under investigation, he added. The military said its response would follow an “assessment of the situation” and a meeting of Israeli security ministers.
The Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah is in power in much of southern Lebanon, and has become a focal point with the Israeli military. Rocket fire on Thursday raised fears of a major fire. Over the past two days, tensions have escalated in Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site and along the Israeli-Gaza border.
The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad hailed the rockets as “a heroic operation against Israeli crimes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” Lebanese state media reported that Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Hamas group that governs the Gaza Strip, also arrived in Beirut on Wednesday.
The site where the Al-Aqsa Mosque is located is Islam’s third holiest site and is revered as the holiest site in Judaism, on a hill known to Jews as the Temple Mount. Conflicting claims about the site have already escalated into violence, including his bloody 11-day war two years ago between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza.
For the past two nights — a volatile time during which the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the Jewish holiday of Passover overlap — Palestinians have tried to barricade themselves in the mosque in protest over threats by religious Jews to sacrifice animals at the sacred site and over perceived Israeli restrictions to Muslim prayers.
Palestinians have been trying to pray overnight at the mosque, which authorities typically only permit during the last 10 days of the monthlong holiday. In the last days, Israeli police have stormed into the mosque to evict worshippers, firing tear gas and stun grenades and fiercely beating Palestinians, who set off firecrackers and hurled stones. Israeli authorities control access to the area but the compound is administered by Islamic and Jordanian officials.
Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group condemned the storming of the mosque, calling it “a flagrant violation of believers in Jerusalem that violated religious, moral and human values.”
Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended inconclusively. Since then, the border has been tense, but largely calm. Palestinian militants have also fired rockets at Israel on a number of occasions, prompting Israeli swift and limited retaliation.
A 19-year-old man was slightly injured by shrapnel, and a 60-year-old woman was injured after falling while sprinting towards an air raid shelter, according to Israeli medical sources.
Videos on social media showed plumes of black smoke rising from the hills of northern Israel and streaks across the sky left by the Iron Dome system. Divergent photos show at least one building where debris fell into the streets of the northern Israeli city of Shlomi, smashing windows. Lebanese state news agency reported that Israeli tanks along the border had fired artillery shells at two towns in southern Lebanon near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidie in retaliation – a claim denied by the Israeli military.
Muslim leaders in the Middle East have criticized Israel’s actions in Al-Aqsa, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with whom Turkey recently made peace with Israel and restored full diplomatic relations.
