Israel conducted rare airstrikes in Lebanon and continued bombarding the Gaza Strip on Friday, an escalation that sparked fears of a broader conflict following violence over Jerusalem’s most sensitive site.
With tensions running high across Israel and the region, an alleged Palestinian shooting attack near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank killed two women in their 20s and seriously wounded a 45-year-old, Israeli medics said. The attack, coming after weeks of unusually heightened unrest in the West Bank, suggested that the recent tensions in Jerusalem could be spilling over to the occupied territory.
During a lull in cross-border airstrikes and rocket fire, at least one Palestinian driving in the Jordan Valley allegedly opened fire on a car of three women, killing two of them, the Israeli military said. Medics said they dragged the unconscious women from their smashed car that appeared to have been pushed off the road.
Qalili resident Bilal Suleiman said his family woke to “violent bombing” that shattered their windows. “I immediately gathered my wife and children and got them out of the house in case there was another strike,” he said. But violence again broke out at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday. The holy site, a tinderbox for Israeli-Palestinian tensions, sits on a hilltop sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In 2021, an escalation also triggered by clashes at the Al-Aqsa compound spilled over into an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
The Israeli military said that Palestinian militants in Gaza had so far fired 44 rockets from Gaza, only 23 of which crossed into Israeli territory. The others either failed to launch, fell into the Mediterranean Sea, or were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system, the military said. Most missiles that managed to cross the border struck open areas in Israel’s south, but one landed in the town of Sderot, sending shrapnel slicing into a house.
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