Israel strikes Lebanon, Gaza as Al-Aqsa crisis escalates
Jerusalem: Israel conducted rare airstrikes in Lebanon on Friday, a sharp escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict after militants fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Israel also continued bombarding the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon what analysts described as the most serious border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group threatened to push the confrontation into a dangerous new phase following violence at one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites.
Also on Friday, the Israeli military said that a Palestinian carried out a shooting attack against Israelis in the northern West Bank.
With tensions running high across Israel and the region, an alleged Palestinian shooting attack near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank killed two women in their 20s and seriously wounded a 45-year-old, Israeli medics said.
The shooting marked the latest incident in a period of unusually high violence in the occupied territory.
Although the Israeli military was quick to emphasize that its warplanes struck sites belonging to only Palestinian militant groups, the barrage risks drawing in Israel’s bitter foe Hezbollah, which holds sway over much of southern Lebanon and has in the past portrayed itself as a defender of the Palestinians and the contested city of Jerusalem.
Even as Israel announced it was allowing residents of the south to leave bomb shelters and return home after an hours long lull in hostilities, the Israeli military said it was boosting infantry and artillery forces along the country’s borders with Lebanon and Gaza “to prepare for all possible scenarios.”
“The forces are on high alert,” said Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari. A Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said that Egyptian security officials have been working with Hamas and Israel to de-escalate the situation.
Earlier Friday, Israeli missiles struck an open field in the southern Lebanese town of Qalili, near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, according to an Associated Press photographer and residents, killing several sheep and inflicting minor injuries on residents, including Syrian refugees.
Other strikes hit a small bridge and power transformer in the nearby town of Maaliya and damaged an irrigation system providing water to orchards in the area.
Qalili resident Bilal Suleiman said his family woke to “violent bombing” that shattered their windows.
“I immediately gathered my wife and children and got them out of the house in case there was another strike,” he said.
The Lebanese military said it found another rocket launcher on Friday after dismantling several the day before. The Israeli airstrikes came in response to an unusually large barrage of rockets from Lebanon after Israeli police raids at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem spiraled into unrest and sparked outrage in the Arab world.
The holy site, a tinderbox for Israeli-Palestinian tensions, sits on a hilltop sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In 2021, an escalation also triggered by clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound spilled over into an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
On Friday, violence again broke out at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Chaos erupted at one of the entrances to the esplanade before dawn prayers on Friday as Israeli police wielding batons descended on crowds of Palestinian
worshippers.
