Casualties have continued to mount in the most severe outbreak of violence between Israel and the Palestinian Territories since 2014.
On Thursday, Israel said it was massing troops along the Gaza frontier as the country called up at least 9,000 reservists ahead of a potential ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory.
Hamas sent a barrage of rockets into Israel as Israel rained airstrikes down on Gaza in the escalating conflict.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday night that at least three rockets had been fired from southern Lebanon into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of northern Israel.
Shortly after, the IDF said a “barrage of rockets” had also been fired at southern Israel.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 103 Palestinians, including 27 children, have been killed, with at least 530 others injured. At least seven Israelis have also been killed since the rocket attacks and airstrikes between Hamas and the IDF began on Monday.
Tensions over the eviction of Palestinians from strategic parts of East Jerusalem reached boiling point at the start of the week, leading to Israeli police descending on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with hundreds injured in the ensuing carnage.
Thousands of Israeli families then spent Wednesday night in bomb shelters as Hamas intensified its bombardment of Tel Aviv and other cities in south, central and northern Israel, while several multi-storey buildings in Gaza have been reduced to rubble.
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No end in sight as IDF troops deployed to border
Despite diplomatic efforts to ease the crisis, which U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he hoped would end “sooner than later”, hundreds of rockets flew across the Gaza Strip overnight.
On Thursday the IDF said it had deployed two infantry units and one armoured unit to the border with Gaza amid reports in Israeli media of a possible ground invasion.
The IDF also confirmed it had struck another multi-storey building in the Rimal district of Gaza being used as a base by Hamas intelligence officers.
Israeli artillery also pounded targets in Gaza from the border and mid-way through Thursday the IDF said it had identified and thwarted four separate groups of Hamas militants operating anti-tank missiles inside Gaza.
Civilian casualties mount on Thursday morning
The Israeli army has struck more than 600 targets in the Gaza Strip since the conflict began four days ago. In Gaza, a crowded coastal enclave of 2 million people, there are no air raid sirens or safe houses.
On the morning of Eid al-Fitr, the normally joyous holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, residents of the Palestinian Territories woke up to scenes of devastation.
Distraught families in hospital told of pulling their bloodied relatives from piles of rubble while bombs continued to thunder in the distance.
- Stun grenades fired at Palestinians inside Al-Aqsa
- Destruction in Gaza and tension in Israel
“There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide,” Zeyad Khattab, a 44-year-old pharmacist, told AP after fleeing to the central district of Deir al-Balah when his high-rise was bombed. “That terror is impossible to describe.”
Hamas rocket attacks also terrorized Israeli citizens on Wednesday night, with the IDF stating on Thursday that some 1,500 rockets had been launched at Israel since the flare-up began.
Most of the rockets were deflected by the country’s Iron Dome air defense system but some landed, destroying homes and property.
Several mixed Israeli cities were also rocked by street-level mob violence on Wednesday night between far-right Jewish groups and Arab citizens of Israel. Businesses and synagogues were looted and torched, and at least one Palestinian was shot and killed in the city of Lod.
Police confirmed on Thursday that they arrested nearly 400 people allegedly “involved in riots and disturbances” across the country the previous night.
Truce efforts by Egypt foundering
The relentless escalation of hostilities, which are spreading farther and wider than at any time since the 2000 Palestinian intifada, came even as Egyptian negotiators held in-person talks with the two sides in a bid to broker a ceasefire.
Egyptian officials arrived in the region on Thursday and met first with Hamas leaders in Gaza before holding talks with the Israelis in Tel Aviv.
But just as their presence was first being reported, Hamas fired an almost simultaneous volley of another 100 rockets, raising air raid sirens around southern and central Israel. “The decision to bomb Tel Aviv, Dimona and Jerusalem is easier for us than drinking water,” a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing said in a video message.
The previous day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also appeared to have shrugged off entreaties by U.S. president Joe Biden to alleviate tensions. Biden told reporters: “My expectation and hope is this will be closing down sooner than later, but Israel has a right to defend itself.”
But Netanyahu’s office later said he had told the US president Israel would “continue acting to strike at the military capabilities of Hamas and the other terrorist groups active in the Gaza Strip”.
On Thursday Netanyahu visited batteries of the Iron Dome missile defense system, which the military says has intercepted 90% of the 1,200 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza so far.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson joined in calls for calm on Thursday, telling reporters: “What everybody wants to see is urgent, urgent de-escalation.”
“I certainly think that everybody in the world wants to see an end to the cycle of reprisals and retaliation, they want to see de-escalation,” he said.
“They want to see both sides, sitting down and talking through and stopping the violence.”