At least 49 dead in Gaza as violence escalates
Israel carries out air strikes and Palestinians fire rocket barrages; UN in truce efforts
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GAZA/JERUSALEM • Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes in Gaza yesterday and Palestinian militants fired multiple rocket barrages at Tel Aviv and the southern city of Beersheba in the region's most intense hostilities in years.
At least 49 people have been killed in Gaza since violence escalated on Monday, according to the enclave's health ministry.
Six people have been killed in Israel, medical officials said.
A Palestinian source said truce efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations were continuing but without progress so far.
UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland said the UN was working with all sides to restore calm.
Diplomatic sources told AFP on Tuesday that the UN Security Council will hold an urgent closed-door meeting on the unrest, its second such session in three days.
In Gaza, a multi-storey residential building collapsed after Israel warned its occupants in advance to evacuate, and another was heavily damaged in the air strikes.
Israel said its warplanes had targeted and killed several of the Islamist group Hamas' intelligence leaders. Other strikes hit what the military said were rocket launch sites, Hamas offices and the homes of the group's leaders.
The heaviest offensive between Israel and Hamas since a 2014 war in the Hamas-ruled enclave has increased international concern that the situation could spiral out of control. "Israel has gone crazy," said a man on a Gaza street, where people ran out of their homes as explosions rocked buildings.
Sixteen people were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza yesterday, the enclave's health ministry said. Witnesses and health officials in Gaza said an Israeli air strike killed three people. Many Israelis also spent a sleepless night, with sirens wailing in Tel Aviv, heralding several waves of rocket strikes in Israel's heartland.
"The children have escaped the coronavirus and now, a new trauma," an Israeli woman in the coastal city of Ashkelon said in footage on Channel 11 television.
Israelis ran to shelters or lay flat on pavements in communities more than 70 km up the coast from Gaza as interceptor missiles streaked into the sky.
The violence followed weeks of tension during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, with clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters near Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday declared a state of emergency in the central city of Lod as police accused Arab residents there of waging "wide-scale riots".
His statement came after an Israeli Arab was killed in Lod the previous night.
On Tuesday night, as protests multiplied across East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and also Israeli Arab cities, the situation degenerated in Lod, police said.
The government said reinforcements were deployed after media reported that three synagogues and several businesses were set on fire in Lod.
REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
