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Ahram Online
Israel carried out its first air strike on the Gaza Strip in months early Tuesday. The strike was in retaliations for a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave on Monday evening following a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque holy site.
The Israeli occupation army said its “special forces had made five arrests overnight” in the occupied West Bank. The area has been witnessing a string of deadly Israeli raids since the increase in attacks and demonstrations four weeks ago.
On Monday, warning sirens sounded after a rocket was fired in Southern Israel. The rocket was launched from the blockaded Gaza strip, controlled by the Hamas Islamist group, in the first such incident since early January.
“The rocket had been intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system”, The Israeli military said.
Hours later, the Israeli air force said it had “hit a Hamas weapons factory in retaliation”. Hamas claimed to have used its “anti-aircraft defences” to counter the raid, which caused no casualties, according to witnesses and security sources in Gaza. No faction in the crowded enclave of 2.3 million people immediately claimed responsibility for launching the rocket.
Recent tensions followed the Israeli provocations at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Israeli-annexed Old City. Palestinian worshippers gathering at the compound for the Ramadan prayers have been outraged by militant religious Jewish visits under heavy Israeli police protection. Jews are allowed to visit the site at certain times but prohibited from praying there, however, this year Israel imposed access restrictions on Palestinians.
The violence, coinciding with the Jewish Passover festival and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, has sparked fears of a repeat clashes reminiscent of last year’s 11-day war in Gaza.
The rocket firing followed a weekend of Israeli-Palestinian violence in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which resulted in killing 16 people and wounding over 170 Palestinian demonstrators this since the beginning of this month. Diplomatic sources said the United Nations Security Council held a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the spike in violence.
