[News] 31 people dead as Netanyahu vows to intensify Gaza attacks.

[S9OUL.]

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to increase the intensity of attacks on Gaza, after a day of ferocious confrontations that left 31 people dead as Israeli jets and Palestinian militants traded airstrikes and rockets.

As medics on both sides put the death toll at 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, two Israelis and an Indian woman working in Ashkelon, the Israeli prime minister said there would be no pause. “It was decided that both the might of the attacks and the frequency of the attacks will be increased,” he announced.

Netanyahu vowed that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “will pay a very heavy price for their belligerence”.

Residents in Gaza City reported bombings of high-rise buildings, while families spent the night cowering in basements. On Tuesday evening, a 13-storey tower housing apartments and the offices of officials from Hamas, the Islamist group that holds power in Gaza, was hit by an Israeli airstrike and collapsed. Residents had earlier been told to evacuate. In response, Hamas’s military wing said it had fired 130 rockets towards Tel Aviv, and air raid sirens and then explosions were heard in the coastal city.

Three people were reported injured when a rocket hit a bus in Holon, just south of Tel Aviv. Nearby Ben Gurion airport was closed and incoming flights were diverted to Cyprus.

A state of emergency was meanwhile declared in Lod, south-east of Tel Aviv, the scene of two nights of rioting by Arab Israelis, in which synagogues and Jewish schools were reported to have been set on fire, as Israel’s internal strife threatened to be more destabilising than rocket attacks from Gaza.

Those attacks began on Monday evening, when after weeks of intense violence in Jerusalem, Hamas fired a barrage towards the holy city, believed to be the first time it had targeted Jerusalem in more than seven years.

 

 

Gaza health officials earlier said seven members of a single family, including three children, had died in an explosion. It was not clear if the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike or a rocket that landed short.

Medics in Israel said more than 25 civilians were being treated following rocket fire, including those wounded from broken glass and shrapnel. Militants had fired at least 250 rockets toward Israel, many of which were intercepted but some made direct hits on apartment buildings. One hit an empty school. The national ambulance service, Magen David Adom, said rocket strikes killed two women in the southern city of Ashkelon on Tuesday afternoon.

Israel’s military said it had killed 15 Hamas “operatives” and a battalion commander in its airstrikes. The government said it would send troop reinforcements to the Gaza frontier and mobilise 5,000 reserve soldiers, leading to fears of a wider confrontation. Previous flare-ups have lasted a few days, with resolutions mediated through indirect talks.

The White House said its “primary focus” was de-escalation and that Joe Biden was being updated on the worsening situation. His spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said US officials were talking to their counterparts in the region.

“We believe Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal measures of freedom, security, dignity and prosperity,” Psaki said. “US officials in recent weeks have spoken candidly with Israeli officials about how evictions of Palestinian families who have lived for years, sometimes decades, in their homes, and how demolitions of these homes, work against our common interests and achieving a solution to the conflict.”

A UN security council session on the crisis was called for on Wednesday, by the Norwegian, Tunisian and Chinese missions. It is likely to be a test of the Biden administration’s position on an issue that it has sought to play down.

In recent weeks, there has been a sharp escalation in anger over Israel’s half-century occupation its ever-deepening military grip over Palestinian life and a wave of evictions and demolitions. In Jerusalem, hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded in near-nightly protests that escalated over the weekend and spread to other areas of Israel and the occupied West Bank.