Israel and Hamas ignore ceasefire pleas in Gaza

Palestinian militants fire 400 rockets and mortars while Israel planes bomb 100 sites.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza have locked themselves into an escalating firefight, launching scores of bombings and reprisal attacks in violence sparked by a botched Israeli special forces raid miles inside Gaza on Sunday evening.

The United Nations and Egypt, which works as an interlocutor between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, were struggling in vain to broker a ceasefire, as Israeli civilians hid overnight in shelters from relentless rocket barrages and Palestinians cowered in basements from thundering airstrikes.

Israel’s military said about 400 rockets and mortars had been fired from Gaza since Monday afternoon, possibly the highest concentration launched in such a period from the enclave, and its warplanes had carried out more than 100 bombings.

Medics in Gaza said five people had been killed, two of whom were militants. In the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, a 40-year-old civilian was killed when a rocket hit a building. It was later revealed that the man was a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank living in Israel. Twenty Israelis have been wounded in the latest bloodshed.

Israel and Hamas have traded tit-for-tat attacks regularly during the past few months, often when Hamas launches rockets in response to Israeli army fire on weekly protests at the frontier – where Palestinians have been calling for an end to the blockade – or on Hamas positions afterwards.

This latest violence, the most intense to date, erupted following Sunday’s Israeli raid. After being exposed at a militant checkpoint, the covert team killed a Hamas commander and fled in a helicopter, witnesses said. Seven Hamas fighters and an Israeli lieutenant colonel were killed in the chaos. Within hours, militants had launched rockets in response.

The extent of the attacks has also been ratcheted up. Israel has previously focused on Hamas military positions in open areas but, by Tuesday, residents said three large residential buildings inside densely populated neighbourhoods of Gaza city were now rubble.

Jets had bombed Hamas’s main internal security compound in Gaza but the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) also said it had blown up sites used for civilian purposes, such as a Hamas-run television building and a structure it said was used for military purposes but also housed a kindergarten.

Residents in Gaza reported Israel was launching low-yield munition warning strikes, what locals call “roof knocks”, on targets before bombing them. This gives civilians several minutes to clear the structure before it is destroyed, and may account for the relatively low fatality count.

Hamas warned it would begin firing more long-range missiles towards the distant cities of Ashdod and Be’er Sheva if Israel continued its sorties.

“What has been happening so far is the traditional retaliation our enemy must have expected. In the next few hours, what our enemy can’t expect will follow,” the group said in a statement.

Hamas and other smaller militant factions in Gaza have stockpiled about 20,000 mortars and rockets, according to the IDF. “Unfortunately, they are not anywhere near the end of their capabilities,” said spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus.

The country’s Iron Dome missile defence system was able to intercept roughly 100 rockets but appeared to have been overwhelmed by the intensity of the launches. Israel sent additional forces to the frontier on Tuesday as international mediators appealed for restraint.

“The escalation in the past 24 hours is extremely dangerous and reckless,” said Nickolay Mladenov, the UN envoy for Israeli-Palestinian peace. “Rockets must stop, restraint must be shown by all.”

Ministers in Israel’s security cabinet were meeting at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been under intense pressure over the past few weeks from some in his own government calling for a more aggressive policy against Gaza.