Israel Retaliates After More Rockets Fired from Syria

2023-04-08

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The Israeli military said three rockets were launched from Syria toward Israel early Sunday, raising to six the number of missiles fired within hours in a rare attack from Israel's northeastern neighbor.

Israel's army said it was retaliating with artillery strikes on the area in Syria from where the rockets were fired at Israel.

The rocket firings come after days of escalating violence on multiple fronts over tension in Jerusalem and an Israeli police raid on the city's most sensitive holy site.

In the second barrage, two of the rockets crossed the border into Israel; one was intercepted and the second landed in an open area, the military said. In the first attack, one rocket landed in a field in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. Fragments of another destroyed missile fell into Jordanian territory near the Syrian border, Jordan's military reported.

There were no reports of casualties.

Meanwhile, a Damascus-based Palestinian group loyal to the Syrian regime claimed responsibility for launching the three missiles on Israel Saturday, Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV reported.

The report quoted Al-Quds Brigade, a militia different than the larger Palestinian Islamic Jihad's armed wing with a similar name, as saying it fired the rockets to retaliate for the police raid on Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In Syria, an adviser to President Bashar Assad described the rocket strikes as "part of the previous, present and continuing response to the brutal enemy."

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli security forces fatally shot a 20-year-old Palestinian in the town of Azzun, Palestinian health officials said, stirring protests in the area. The Israeli military said troops fired at Palestinians hurling stones and explosive devices. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the Palestinian killed as Ayed Salim.

His death came at a time of unusually heightened violence in the West Bank. More than 90 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire so far this year, at least half of them affiliated with militant groups, according to a tally by The Associated Press.

Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 19 people in that time, including on Friday two British-Israelis shot to death near a settlement in the Jordan Valley and an Italian tourist killed by a suspected car-ramming in Tel Aviv. All but one were civilians.

The rocket fire from Syria comes against the backdrop of soaring Israeli-Palestinian tensions touched off by an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem's most sensitive site, the sacred compound home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. That outraged Palestinians marking the holy fasting month of Ramadan and prompted militants in Lebanon - as well as Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip - to fire a heavy barrage of rockets into Israel.

In retaliation, Israeli warplanes struck sites allegedly linked to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

Late Saturday in Jerusalem, a few hundred Palestinian worshippers barricaded themselves in the mosque, which sits on a hilltop in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

The latest escalations prompted Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to extend a closure barring entrance to Israel for Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for the duration of the Jewish holiday of Passover, while police beefed up forces in Jerusalem on the eve of sensitive religious celebrations.

In a separate incident in the northern West Bank city of Nablus late Saturday, a leader of a local independent armed group known as the Lion's Den claimed the group executed an alleged Israeli collaborator who had tipped off the Israeli military to the locations and movements of the group's members. Israeli security forces have targeted and killed several of the group's key members in recent months.

The accused man's killing could not be immediately confirmed, but videos in Palestinian media showed medics and residents gathered around his bloodied body in the Old City, where the Lion's Den holds sway.

The moves come at a time of heightened religious fervor - with Ramadan coinciding with Passover and Easter celebrations. Jerusalem's Old City, home to key Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, has been teeming with visitors and religious pilgrims from around the world.