Death Toll Surges on Second Day of Israel-Gaza War.....
Smoke rises over Gaza City as Israel carries out a
second day of air and missile strikes in response to
barrages of rocket fire following its targeted killing of
a top militant (AFP Photo/MAHMUD HAMS)
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) - Exchanges of fire triggered by Israel's targeted killing of a top militant in Gaza killed 16 Arab Palestinians on Wednesday, with the violence showing little sign of easing.
The total death toll in the coastal enclave rose to 26 since Tuesday, according to Gaza's health ministry. New rounds of rockets were fired at Israel, which responded with strikes on what it said were Islamic Jihad militant sites and rocket-launching squads in the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday afternoon, it said it targeted two Islamic Jihad militants preparing to fire anti-tank missiles. Air raid sirens wailed and fireballs exploded as air defence missiles intercepted rockets, sending Israelis rushing to bomb shelters.
In Gaza, residents surveyed damage and mourned the dead outside a mortuary and at funerals.
UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov arrived in Cairo on Wednesday afternoon, airport officials said, following reports he was to hold talks on halting the fighting. The UN and Egypt have been instrumental in mediating previous ceasefires between Israel and Gaza-based militants.
But a source close to the discussions aimed at mediating a truce warned that the risk of further escalation remained high. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Islamic Jihad must stop its stop rocket attacks or "absorb more and more blows".
He reiterated his warning that "this could take time" and said Israel would respond to attacks "without mercy". Islamic Jihad spokesman Musab al-Barayem said the group was not interested in mediation for now as it retaliated to the killing of one of its commanders.
Jihad turns to using short-range rockets against Israeli locations close to Gaza ...............
November 14, 2019
During Wednesday, November 13, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad withheld use of its long-range rockets against central Israel and instead hammered Israeli locations near the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no casualties. This was the second day of Jihad’s retaliation for the killing of its leader Baha Abu Al-Atta on Tuesday.
After a 7-hour overnight pause, the Islamic Jihad resumed its rocket attacks early Wednesday, November 12, swinging around from its usual boundaries to target the Shefela regions of eastern Israel.
The first rockets were aimed at locations close to the Gaza Strip and Ashkelon, but after 8 a.m.broadened out to Beit Shemesh in the Jerusalem Hills, the Mat Yehuda Council, Kibbutz Hulda near the old highway to Jerusalem, and locations east of the town of Ramle: Mishmar David, Mishmar Ayalon, Kfar Bin-Nun and Karmei Yosef.
Alert sirens were also heard in the Mate Binyamin Council northeast of the town of Modiin. No casualties were reported.
On Tuesday, Tel Aviv and parts of central Israel, which took rocket fire, were placed on an emergency footing by extending the order to close schools and places of work from the 40 kilometre radius covering locations adjoining the Gaza Strip to 80 kilometres. This extension was lifted overnight.
On Wednesday morning, the Israel Air Force kept up its steady assaults on Jihad positions and rocket stores, with the focus on picking off rocket launch teams. The IDF is not going over the top so as not to rouse Hamas out of its current posture of non-intervention coupled with non-restraint for Jihad’s rocket fire.
Of all the armed proxies run by the Al Qods Brigades of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the midget – no more than 7,000 to 10,000 men under arms and only about 5,000 combatants for a potential war against Israel.
For comparison, the leading pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiite militias can muster an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 each. Hamas too has built a paramilitary force of 25,000 trained fighters.
Jihad commands an arsenal of around 10,000 rockets, around one-tenth of that amassed by Hamas, but still enough to immobilize large areas of Israel for days on end, especially as proved on Tuesday, when accompanied by constant threats of more punishment to come. This feat alone afforded a small Palestinian terrorist group a kind of success.
The IDF in its first briefing early Wednesday estimated that the Islamic Jihad had not done with reprisals for the death of a senior commander Baha Abu Al-Atta by Israeli forces 24 hours earlier.
Jihad for its first salvos on Wednesday, November 13, drew on its short-range rocket stores to attack Israeli locations close to Gaza, keeping its estimated 1,000 longer-range weapons in reserve – possibly for future rounds.
This terrorist group has not, furthermore, used its special forces units, who are trained to conduct raids into Israel by land or sea for terrorist operations; nor the small exploding UAV’s in its armoury, which carry 3-5kg each of explosives. These staged tactics appear to reliable military sources to be calibrated according to outside orders from Damascus or Beirut.
The IDF Home Command is therefore keeping the emergency in place for another day, although the closures initially ordered by the IDF Home Command on schools, places of work and services in central Israel – which holds 40% of the population – were lifted.
Those closures appeared at the time to be disproportionate after only two rockets of the 250 fired on Tuesday were aimed – and intercepted – over Tel Aviv and smacked rather of a national emergency for a full-scale war.
However, it was imposed after Israel appeared to be getting set for a possible decision by Tehran to widen the scenario of retaliation from Gaza to several more fronts. This potential danger has not been dismissed.
“The coming hours will be critical for the Gaza situation,” said Deputy Defence Minister Avi Dichter on Wednesday night. “Islamic Jihad has taken a serious beating and if these terrorists keep on escalating the violence, they will suffer much worse.”
The IDF strikes a Jihad long-range warhead factory....Three injured when rocket hits Ashkelon home for the elderly ...
November 14, 2019
Israel’s military spokesman reported that the air force struck and destroyed on Wednesday the Islamic Jihad’s main factory in Rafah for producing warheads for long-range rockets, as well as a pile of finished rockets turned out by the plant.
Other targets were a Jihad officer’s command centre in Khan Younes that served as a secret store for long-range rockets, and a naval vessel used to train the group’s trainees for commando infiltrations of Israel. It was sunk by an Israeli warship.
Since Israel launched reprisals for Jihad’s rocket attacks in Gaza on Tuesday, some 16 Palestinians have been killed and at least 50 wounded.
A Jihad rocket caused heavy damage to a home for senior citizens in Ashkelon on Wednesday evening. Three were taken to hospital with injuries.
Up until now, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has fired 350 rockets in two days of reprisals for the death of Baha Abu al-Atta, focusing Wednesday afternoon on the towns of Ashkelon and Netivot as well as heavily blasting Sderot and its neighbouring locales.
Hamas has so far stayed aloof from the Jihad attacks. A Hamas official speaking to a foreign correspondent warned that if the IDF continues to batter Jihad sites, his organization will pitch in. Israel military sources countered that if this happened, the high-rise buildings housing Hamas offices in Gaza City were at risk.
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