Since yesterday afternoon, Israeli forces (IDF) have confirmed: more than 160 rockets have been launched from the Gaza Strip in the direction of Israel
The tension shows no sign of easing between Islamic Jihad and Israel with a second day of war between rockets and raids. In the Strip the dead have reached 24 with more than 100 injured. Among the victims, at least 5 – among them, according to the Gaza health ministry, including children – are those caused by an explosion in Jabalya, in the north of the Strip. If the Palestinian media blamed an Israeli air force attack, the army denied any wrongdoing by placing the blame on “a faulty rocket” of the Jihad that landed on the scene. In addition, the same military spokesman specified that the last attack in the area in question took place two hours earlier than later. Meanwhile, the power plant of the Strip is out of order due to a lack of diesel, with the hospitals in difficulty, due to the closure of the crossings.
In the general calculation of the dead also two women: the youngest, 23 years old, was killed in a damaged house in Khan Younis in the south of the Palestinian enclave. On Israel – which last night arrested 19 members of the Jihad in the West Bank – a shower of mortar shells and rockets spilled from Gaza which, for the first time, lashed the urban perimeter of Tel Aviv. At least 380 were calculated by the army – especially in the southern area of Israel – in about 24 hours of conflict: 120 were intercepted by the defense system of the Iron Dome, 90 fell within the same Strip. The situation does not seem destined to unblock at the moment: the army has calculated a week of operations and Prime Minister Yair Lapid has summoned the Security Cabinet with the military leaders for a reconnaissance of the state of the ‘Breaking dawn’ operation launched yesterday. Defense Minister Benny Gantz was even clearer and warned that even overseas leaders of Islamic Jihad – notoriously linked to Iran – “will have to pay the price” for the attacks waged against Israel.
“The leaders of the Jihad – underlined Gantz probably indicating the possible objectives – move abroad in restaurants and hotels, in Teheran, Syria and Lebanon”. However, there are two factors that can influence the comparison: the first is that so far Hamas – which governs Gaza – has not participated in the clash: not a single rocket – the experts observed – has started from its launch pads. The second is linked to the possible Egyptian mediation: a delegation of the secret services of that country – the Ansa learned in Cairo – has “established various contacts between the parties, Israeli and Palestinian, in order to impose a ceasefire” and avoid a new full-scale conflict. Egypt has repeatedly been a decisive element in previous wars between Gaza and Israel. The fact is that the crisis risks triggering a wider conflict if the two factors fail. In Israel, the entire south is under the grip of launches with the population forced to run to shelters: so far there have been no victims thanks to the coverage of the Iron Dome but only people injured during the race to the anti-missile bunkers or hit by a crisis of panic.
To photograph the situation well, the fact that the friendly match between Juventus and Atletico Madrid scheduled for tomorrow evening in Tel Aviv was canceled by the organizers and moved to Turin due to “security tensions in southern Israel”. The EU said it was following “with great concern the latest developments in Gaza” and called for “maximum restraint from all parties to avoid further escalation and other victims”. “Although Israel – said the spokesman for the EU External Action Service (Seae), Peter Stano – has the right to protect its civilian population, it is necessary to do everything possible to prevent a wider conflict”.
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