Israeli airstrikes killed one Gaza militant and injured 17 people in the coastal strip June 23 while a rocket from the Palestinian territory wounded one Israeli. The country's military chief of staff summoned senior officers to discuss the latest flare up in violence.
A military spokesman said Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz convened “an urgent meeting” to discuss ways of dealing with the Palestinian attacks. Gaza militants fired over 20 rockets and mortar shells on Saturday alone, bringing the week’s rocket tally to about 150.
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, gave no other details about the meeting.
Over a million people living in southern Israel are in range of the rockets. The Israeli military has told people there to make sure they can get to a bomb shelter quickly. An Israeli was seriously wounded Saturday when a Gaza rocket smashed through a factory roof. Several other Israelis were injured in Palestinian rocket attacks this past week.
The spike in violence began on Monday when two gunmen infiltrated into Israel along its border with Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and killed an Israeli Arab construction worker who was on a crew building a border security fence meant to avert such attacks. Later, a little known al-Qaida-inspired group, the Mujahedeen Shura Council of Jerusalem, claimed responsibility for the attack and identified the gunmen as an Egyptian and a Saudi.
Since then, Gaza gunmen have fired barrages of rockets and mortar rounds at Israel, wounding several Israelis and damaging apartment buildings. Israel responded with airstrikes on militant targets that gave killed at least 9 Palestinians and wounded more than 20 so far.
Gaza health official Ashraf Al Kedra said that a boy was killed in an airstrike Saturday morning in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said they didn’t attack that area. Palestinian rockets often misfire and explode inside Gaza.
On Friday, an Israeli airstrike killed a Gaza militant as he was preparing to launch rockets.
The flare-up is the most serious in months, drawing in militants from Hamas, which rules the territory but has largely refrained from attacking Israel since a war more than three years ago. Other Palestinian groups persisted with rocket assaults and other attacks on Israel during that time.
