GAZA/TEL AVIV — A 13-storey residential block in the Gaza Strip collapsed on
Tuesday night after being hit by an Israeli air strike, witnesses said, and
three people were wounded in a retaliatory rocket attack from
Gaza on Tel Aviv,
killing a woman, reports said.
اضافة اعلان
Agence France Presse said an Israeli woman was killed by
rocket fire near Tel Aviv on Tuesday Hamas launched a barrage of projectiles
towards Israel's economic hub, police said.
"One woman killed in the city of Rishon Letzion in
rocket strike," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Reuters said video footage showed three plumes of thick,
black smoke rising from the Gaza tower, its upper stories still intact as they
fell. The building houses an office used by the political leadership of the
enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas.
Electricity in the surrounding area went out, and residents
were using flashlights.
Shortly after the attack, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group
said they would respond by firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
Air raid sirens and explosions were heard around the city,
and the skies were lit up by the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles
launched towards the incoming rockets.
Pedestrians ran for shelter, and diners streamed out of Tel
Aviv restaurants while others flattened themselves on pavements as the sirens
sounded. Israeli television stations said three people had been wounded in the
suburb of Holon.
The Israel Airports Authority said it had halted take-offs
at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport "to allow defense of (the) nation's
skies".
The US State Department urged restraint on both sides.
"We are now carrying out our promise," Hamas's
armed wing said in a statement. "The Qassam Brigades are launching their
biggest rocket strike against Tel Aviv and its suburbs, with 130 rockets, in
response to the enemy’s targeting of residential towers."
Hours earlier, Israel had sent 80 jets to bomb Gaza and
massed tanks on the border as rocket barrages hit Israeli towns for a second
day, deepening a conflict in which at least 28 people in the Palestinian
enclave and two in Israel have been killed.
Residents of the block and people living nearby had been
warned to evacuate the area around an hour before the air strike, according to
witnesses, and there were no reports of casualties two hours after it
collapsed.
The most serious outbreak of fighting since 2019 between
Israel and armed factions in Gaza was triggered by clashes between Palestinians
and Israeli police at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque on Monday.
The holy city has been tense during the Muslim fasting month
of
Ramadan, with the threat of a court ruling evicting Palestinians from homes
claimed by Jewish settlers adding to the friction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would step up
its strikes on Gaza, an enclave of 2 million people, in response to the rocket
attacks.
"Both the strength of the attacks and the frequency of
the attacks will be increased," he said in a video statement.
Within an hour, Israel said it had deployed jets to bomb
rocket launch sites in and around Gaza City.
Officials said infantry and armor were being dispatched to
reinforce the tanks already gathered on the border, evoking memories of the
last Israeli ground incursion into Gaza to stop rocket attacks, in 2014.
More than 2,100 Gazans were killed in the seven-week war
that followed, according to the Gaza health ministry, along with 73 Israelis,
and thousands of homes in Gaza were razed.
On Tuesday, before the block collapsed, the Gaza health
ministry said at least 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, had been killed
and 152 wounded by Israeli strikes since Hamas on Monday fired rockets towards
Jerusalem for the first time since 2014.
Israel's national ambulance service said two women had been
killed in rocket strikes on the southern city of Ashkelon.
The International Committee of the Red Cross urged all sides
to step back, and reminded them of the requirement in international law to try
to avoid civilian casualties.
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