On Friday, April 7, the Israeli military carried out airstrikes in the blockaded Gaza strip and in southern Lebanon following rocket attacks into Israel over the last couple of days. The rocket fire was in retaliation to Israeli violence against Palestinian worshippers on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on multiple occasions this week.
According to reports, the Israeli air raids targeted the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre, where residents heard explosions near a refugee camp. A number of targets in Gaza were hit too. Residents reported hearing a series of explosions throughout the night. Several homes in residential areas suffered damage. One of the strikes took place near a hospital in eastern Gaza.
Palestinian resistance group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah denounced the Israeli aggression and warned of consequences if such attacks continue. The Lebanese government also warned Israel against further attacks, saying that they threaten peace and security in the region. The United Nations called for restraint from all sides.
The Israeli military claimed that it had targeted military and training camps, weapons facilities, and tunnels belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It blamed Hamas for the rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon, but said that it holds the whole state of Lebanon responsible for the attacks. Israel had earlier claimed that over 30 rockets were fired into its territory in Western Galilee, in northern Israel, from Lebanon, and an unknown number of rockets were fired from Gaza. Most of the rockets were intercepted by the Israeli air defense system except for five which landed in the area and caused damage to properties. Reports noted that the rockets caused minor injuries to two people.
The rocket attacks come in the wake of Israeli security forces storming and raiding the Al-Aqsa mosque compound for the fourth day in a row. They also assaulted Palestinian worshippers gathered in the mosque for prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, disrupting them in the midst of prayers. On Thursday, Israeli soldiers attacked the unarmed worshippers with clubs, stun grenades, tear gas canisters, and rubber coated metal bullets, injuring several of them. 400 Palestinians were also arrested during the violent raids.
Israel has reportedly also imposed stringent restrictions on Palestinians and barred anyone below the age of 40 from entering the mosque compound.
Similar raids had been carried out on Wednesday and Tuesday as well. It has also been reported that a group of Israeli settlers—under the protection of Israeli security forces—entered the mosque compound and started performing prayers there in violation of the 1967 agreement which forbids prayers by non-Muslim people in the mosque.
Palestinians in Israel and across the occupied territories have been staging demonstrations to protest the Israeli violence at the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Israeli incursions and attacks against worshippers in the mosque compound have increased significantly over the last several years as both the Israeli government and the illegal Israeli settler groups try to stake claim to the mosque compound and the wider Palestinian-majority East Jerusalem area in an effort to change the demographics and ownership of land.
