CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Hamas said it launched missiles on Sunday at Tel Aviv, an Israeli coastal city where sirens sounded for the first time in four months.
The Israeli army reported the presence of eight projectiles coming from the Rafah region, at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where Israel continued its operations despite an order from the highest UN court to stop attack this city.
Still according to the IDF, some projectiles were intercepted and Israeli emergency services said they had not received any reports of casualties.
In a statement posted on Telegram, Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades said the rockets were launched in response to what it called “Zionist massacres against civilians.”
According to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television, the rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip.
Rafah is located about a hundred kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
Israel says it wants to fight Hamas militants holed up in Rafah and rescue hostages held in the region, but its attack has worsened the plight of Palestinian civilians, provoking an international outcry.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed and injured by Israeli airstrikes on an area of Rafah reserved for displaced people, a medical source told Reuters.
Israeli tanks searched the outskirts of the town near the main southern crossing point into Egypt, but did not enter the town in force.
After the attack on Tel Aviv, Israeli Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is not part of Israel’s war cabinet, urged the army to hit the city of Rafah harder.
“Rafah with all his strength,” he posted on his X account.
Nearly 36,000 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli offensive, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led militants attacked communities in southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
Fighting also continued Sunday in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, a densely populated area that saw intense fighting at the start of the war and where Israel says it wants to prevent Hamas from strengthening.
AID TRUCKS ENTER GAZA
The military said it discovered a weapons storage site containing dozens of rocket parts and weapons during a school raid.
The IDF has denied Hamas claims that Palestinian fighters kidnapped an Israeli soldier.
Efforts to end the fighting and free around 100 hostages held in Gaza have been stalled for weeks, but there were signs following meetings between Israeli and US intelligence officials and the Prime Minister of Qatar.
According to an official close to the matter, a decision was made to resume negotiations this week on the basis of new proposals from Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with “the active participation of the United States.”
A Hamas official, however, denied the report, telling Reuters: “It’s not true.”
Izzat El-Reshiq, a senior Hamas official in exile, said the group had received nothing from mediators about new dates for resuming talks as Israeli media had reported.
Reshiq reiterated Hamas’ demands, which include “ending the aggression completely and definitively, in the entire Gaza Strip, not just in Rafah.”
As Israel seeks to free the hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war will only end when Hamas is eliminated.
Israel is under pressure to bring more aid into Gaza, an enclave ravaged by more than seven months of war, where famine threatens.
Israel was due to allow around 200 aid trucks to enter Gaza on Sunday via Kerem Shalom, on the southeastern edge of the Palestinian enclave, bypassing the main Rafah crossing which has been blocked for weeks.
This follows an agreement to this effect concluded on Friday between US President Joe Biden and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sissi.
Khaled Zayed, an Egyptian Red Crescent official, told Reuters that 200 aid trucks, including four tankers, were expected to enter Gaza via Kerem Shalom on Sunday.
Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV channel shared a video on X, showing what it says are aid trucks entering Kerem Shalom, which before the war was the main commercial crossing point between Israel, Egypt and Gaza.
The Rafah crossing has been closed for almost three weeks.
Worried about the prospect of large numbers of Palestinians entering its territory from Gaza, Egypt refused to open the Rafah crossing on its side.
(Nidal al-Mughrabi, Jaidaa Taha, Emily Rose, Yusri Mohamed.; French version Elizabeth Pineau)
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