Israel, Gaza Militants Exchange Heavy Fire After Raid Goes Awry Escalating hostilities following military operation in territory threaten to upend fragile cease-fire talks with Hamas By Dov Lieber
https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-seek-calm-after-gaza-raid-goes-awry-1542033474
TEL AVIV—Israel’s military and Gaza militant groups exchanged heavy fire in an escalation of hostilities that threatened to upend fragile cease-fire talks that had been gaining momentum.
Israel said Hamas and other militant groups fired more than 300 rockets at Israel on Monday in what is the largest barrage aimed at the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip since their war in 2014. The militants said they were responding to an Israeli operation Sunday night in Gaza that left seven Palestinian militants and an Israeli military officer dead.
At least one Israeli was seriously injured on Monday when an antitank missile fired from Gaza struck a bus near the border, Israeli paramedics said, and at least 10 others were lightly injured by shrapnel in or near the Israeli town of Sderot. Homes in the Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Netivot took direct hits from rocket fire, according to videos shown on Israel’s public broadcaster Kan.
In response to the rocket fire, the Israeli military said it carried out 70 airstrikes against military targets in Gaza, including the building that housed Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV station, an official media arm of the militant group. Israel accused the outlet of directing terror activities against it.
The strikes killed at least three Palestinians and injured nine others, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an armed group, said two of the dead were their members, and Islamic Jihad, also an armed group, said one of the dead belonged to it.
The attacks were the most intense fighting in weeks on the Gaza border, following a period of calm that coincided with stepped-up peace talks between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, mediated by Egypt and the United Nations. After months of worsening restrictions on Gaza, Israel had begun allowing humanitarian aid from Qatar to flow in, easing conditions there.
The relative quiet was broken Sunday night by what Israel described as an intelligence-gathering mission gone wrong.
Hamas said a gunbattle erupted after members of its military wing noticed a team of Israeli special forces entering southern Gaza near the city of Khan Yunis in a civilian car on Sunday night. The Israeli soldiers retreated to the border under intense cover fire from Israeli aircraft and were whisked away in a helicopter. Israel later blew up the car that the unit drove into Gaza, Hamas said.
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