Hamas military commander Muhammad Al-Deif released a recorded message, announcing operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” and saying the Palestinian group “targeted the enemy positions, airports and military positions with 5,000 rockets.”
One Israeli person died and at least three were injured when a barrage of rockets was fired from Gaza toward the occupied territories on Saturday morning, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said.
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The rockets prompted sirens as far north as the Tel Aviv area, east to Beer Sheva, and many other locations in between, CNN reported.
A woman in her 70s in Kfar Aviv in the Gderot region died following the barrage, the MDA said.
Two other people in the Ashkelon area were injured, the rescue service said, while a fourth person – a man in his 20s in Yavne – was moderately injured by shrapnel.
The rockets were fired at about 6:30 am Saturday morning local time (11:30 p.m. ET), when most Israelis are likely to have been asleep.
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Al Jazeera said the “element of surprise” in the early morning attack which appeared to involve Palestinian fighters in trucks and on paragliders, in addition to the rocket fire, will leave Israelis “shocked and stunned”.
The rockets launched on Saturday come after weeks of growing tensions along occupied Palestine’s volatile border with Gaza, and clashes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where some 200 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military so far this year.