Gaza fires rockets at Israel one day after 11 Palestinians died in West Bank raid
Well, a new round of violence between Israelis and the Israeli military and Palestinians has spilled over into Gaza and southern Israel. Militants in Gaza fired rockets at two Israeli cities. One day after 11 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed in a gunfight with Israeli troops. Israeli warplanes responded, attacking targets inside Gaza. There are no reports of casualties on either side, though. So Yolandele is in Jerusalem. She has the very latest for us.
She is a Middle East correspondent with our partners at the BBC. Thanks for joining us. So there has clearly been a lot going on in the news, and I think sometimes we don't always zero in on what's happening in Israel. So can you sort of give us the latest? What more can you tell us about the latest round of fighting there? Well, this happened around dawn this morning. We'd already had threats from both Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the two big militant groups in Gaza, that they were going to retaliate for the deadly raid in Nablus in the occupied West Bank a day ago. And then six rockets were fired, as you said, from the Gaza Strip towards southern Israel. Five of them brought down by Israel's iron-dome missile defense system.
One landed in an open area. The Israeli military was very quick to respond with airstrikes inside Gaza, targeting what it said were Hamas facilities, including a weapons manufacturing workshop. And we're looking at that thinking that actually was a relatively muted response compared to what could have happened, because we know that these militant groups have large rocket arsenals. They have sometimes in the past fired barrages of rockets into Israel, reaching as far as here in Jerusalem. But we know that Egypt was very much involved in trying to broker some sort of relative calm. And what we have now is the UN involved. Its Middle East envoy has gone into the Gaza Strip this morning.
So what was the motive behind the raid in the West Bank on Wednesday in which 11 Palestinians were killed? So that raid came about, the Israeli military said, because it was targeting several wanted Palestinian men, it had information, real-time information, it seems, on the whereabouts of one of them. It says that they were all men who were involved in shooting attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank, including involvement in the killing of an Israeli soldier last October. And it said that they were planning future attacks. But they went in, in mid-morning, into the old city of Nablus, which is a busy, bustling place, kind of a market place. So it was actually full of people. There are other armed fighters that are in that area. And so as their military closed in, what they said was a hideout being used by the wanted men.
Other armed fighters from the area also got involved. You had four hours of gun battles. And the large numbers of killed, 11 killed, that's the highest number that we've seen since 2005 at the end of the second Palestinian interfader or uprising. Political militant groups are saying that six of those killed were armed fighters, but locals are saying that five of them were civilians. They include man in his 70s, a couple of men in their 60s, and a boy of 16. And so I know you mentioned the possibility of sort of brokering some sort of deal, a ceasefire, if you will. What can we expect in terms of violence? Are we expecting more in the coming days? There's a definite concern here that violence really could spiral out of control.
And we've had all these international players, the U.S. in particular, hoped earlier this week that it had been able to go behind the scenes and bring about some sort of deal for relative calm between the Israelis and Palestinians. That has not succeeded at the moment. Still people very much on edge. There's a general strike across the Palestinian territories today. That means schools, universities, businesses are all closed.
And we have seen in the past few hours a few attempted stabbing or shooting attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank. They've not amounted to much at the moment. But still there is that concern, especially in the period going forward, when we have major holidays coinciding for Muslims and Jews. The Islamic holiday of Ramadan, the Jewish holiday of Passover are going to come at the same time this year. They're going to overlap. And that means tensions are going to be very high, especially here in Jerusalem at contested holy sites. Wow, Yolanda, thank you very much.
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