In the heaviest shelling of Israel from Gaza since the 2014 war with Hamas, terrorists fired more than 28 mortars into Israel, with one landing next to a kindergarten, before the school day started, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
This morning, nearly 30 rockets were fired by Palestinian terrorists from #Gaza at Israel. one of them hit a kindergarten, luckily empty at the time.
No country would accept such threats to its civilian population. pic.twitter.com/Zx0XCi4eQV
— Israel Foreign Min. (@IsraelMFA) May 29, 2018
The Times described the bombardment as the “the heaviest to be fired out of the Palestinian coastal territory since the 50-day war in the summer of 2014.”
The IDF said that it struck 35 terrorist sites inside Gaza in response to the terrorist fire.
“Israel views with utmost gravity the attacks against it and its communities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the attacks, at the 9th Galilee Conference. “The IDF will respond with great force to these attacks. Israel will exact a heavy price from anyone who tries to attack it, and we view Hamas as responsible for preventing such attacks against us.”
Emphasizing Netanyahu’s point, Israeli military spokesman Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus said of Hamas, “They have the ability, the control and the power to escalate or to deescalate the situation, to rein in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their own extremist factions in Hamas or to escalate the situation.”
Later Palestinian sources said that terrorist had fired over 100 rockets and mortars into Israel. One of the rockets hit and damaged power lines providing electricity to Gaza. Israel’s Electric Company says that repairs will take several days, and Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told the company not to fix the lines as long as the violence continued so as “not endanger its workers.”
More barrages incoming from Gaza in last few minutes. Code Red in Israeli border communities and nearby city of Ashkelon. Doesn't seem like Palestinian Islamic Jihad is backing down. Beggars belief Hamas isn't allowing all this.
— Neri Zilber (@NeriZilber) May 29, 2018
The rockets and mortars are the latest escalation of violence by Hamas following weeks of Hamas-led violent riots at the Gaza-Israel border.
Of the 112 Gazans reported killed as the IDF attempted to keep infiltrators from breaching the border fence, 93 or 83% have been identified as belonging to or being affiliated with terror groups in Gaza, according to findings of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC). The ITIC determined the links between those killed and terror groups by looking at “open source information of variable quality, mainly from social media (Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter).”
The ITIC’s findings are consistent with the claim of Hamas official, Salah Bardawil, who said that 50 out of the 62 killed during the violent May 14 riots were members of Hamas. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed another three of those killed that day.
In addition to sending rioters to breach the border fence with Israel, Hamas has overseen the launching of incendiary kites, which have flown into Israel and burned hundreds of acres of the Be’eri Crater Nature Reserve.
The Israeli NGO, Shurat Hadin, has launched an effort to bring a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court against Hamas for the campaign of flying kites to start fires inside of Israel. “According to Israeli media,” The Jerusalem Post reported, “the kites are responsible for some 260 fires in Israeli fields over the past month, destroying thousands of acres of crops and causing millions of dollars in damage.”
[Photo: IsraelMFA / Twitter ]