At least 100 Israelis killed as Palestinians launch Operation Al-Aqsa against Israel

GAZA:  

Hamas on Saturday launched an unprecedented attack against Israel, killing at least 100, according to BBC. 

At least 40 people have been killed in Israel during fighting with Palestinians on Saturday, the Magen David Adom emergency medical services said in a statement.
“Since the morning hours, MDA teams provided medical care to hundreds of casualties, and pronounced 40 people dead,” it said, while the Israeli health ministry confirmed that at least 779 people had been injured and taken to hospitals.

The attack occurred on Shabbat and during a Jewish holiday.

“We decided to put an end to all the crimes of the occupation (Israel). Their time for rampaging without being held accountable is over,” said the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip. “We announce Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and we fired, in the first strike of 20 minutes, more than 5,000 rockets.”

Hamas released a video showing three men captured by its fighters. An AFP journalist saw armed Palestinians gathered around an Israeli tank, which was partially in flames, after they crossed the border fence from Khan Yunis in Gaza. Another AFP journalist saw Palestinians returning to Gaza City driving a seized Israeli Humvee.

Hamas calls to ‘join battle’

Hamas called on “the resistance fighters in the West Bank” as well as “our Arab and Islamic nations” to join the battle, in a statement posted on Telegram.

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war against Israel in 2006, hailed the Palestinians’ “heroic operation on a grand scale”.

Israeli officials said Palestinians have begun a “war” against Israel which they infiltrated by air, sea and land from the blockaded Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “we are at war” and vowed severe retaliation after ordering an extensive mobilisation of Israeli army reserves. “The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he warned.

Violence between Israel and the Palestinians has been surging since early last year, with fatalities in the occupied West Bank hitting a scale not seen in years. Gaza is sealed off from Israel by a militarised border barrier.

The rocket barrage from Gaza left cars burning beneath residential buildings in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, about 10 kilometres (six miles) north of Gaza.

Israel bombs Gaza

Netanyahu said in a statement Hamas had launched a “murderous surprise attack” against Israel and its people.

The Israeli leader said he had “ordered an extensive mobilisation of reserves” and fire would be returned at “a magnitude that the enemy has not known”. AFP journalists said Israel’s military began air strikes on Gaza, following the rocket barrage from inside the territory.

“Dozens of IDF fighter jets are currently striking a number of targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation in the Gaza Strip,” the military said.

Air raid sirens wailed across southern and central Israel, as well as an unusual number of times in Jerusalem, where AFP journalists heard multiple rockets being intercepted by Israeli air defence systems.

Western capitals roundly denounced the Palestinian attacks on Israel. The United States condemned the Hamas fire and urged “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.”