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Gaza City (CNN) -- Explosions rumbled through Gaza
City all night into Friday, and shortly after sunup, two detonations
landed just 500 to 600 yards away from CNN's team sending it running for
cover inside the hotel.
A litany of bombardments
provided for a sleepless night of hearing and feel incoming ordinance
exploding and watching rockets leaving Gaza for Israel.
Falling bombs made doors
clatter and sometimes even one's bones. Clouds of smoke sprouted into
the sky paralleling the repetition of thunderous booms.
New destruction will
await Egypt's new Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, when he arrives Friday
morning in Gaza to meet with Palestinian officials.
Israel reported three
people were killed, and Palestinians reported 19 deaths, including at
least three killed late Thursday. Hamas gave conflicting information as
to how many of them were Hamas militants.
At least 422 rockets from
Gaza have been fired into Israel since "Operation Pillar of Defense"
began Wednesday, the Israeli military said. Israel's Iron Dome defense
system has intercepted 130, the Israel Defense Forces said. The
al-Qassam Brigade, Hamas' military arm, said on its Twitter feed that it
had shot 527 projectiles at Israel in that time.
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One rocket struck an open
area near Rishon LeZion, an Israeli city with more than 200,000
residents just south of Tel Aviv, the IDF said.
Map: Israel
Also, air sirens went off
inside and outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. The
building was evacuated briefly, and employees were allowed back in when
the sirens stopped. An explosion was heard far off in the distance.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the building at the time of the evacuation, ministry officials said.
Israel has targeted more
than 300 "terror sites" in Gaza, the IDF said. The military said it
targeted scores of "medium and long range rocket launch and
infrastructure sites across the Gaza Strip." The Israeli navy has taken
aim at targets along Gaza's shoreline, the IDF said.
Airstrikes continued overnight, with planes striking sites in Gaza City.
Sources with Hamas,
which controls the government in Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad
said that more than 140 strikes had hit Gaza.
The al-Qassam Brigade
said its operatives downed a military drone east of Gaza. An Israeli
military spokeswoman told CNN that no IDF aircraft was shot down.
At least three Israelis
were killed and four were wounded when a rocket struck an apartment
building in the town of Kiryat Malakhi on Thursday, an Israeli police
spokesman said.
Israeli military
spokeswoman Avital Leibovich tweeted a photo that she said was a baby
wounded from a rocket attack in Israel. The baby's face is blurred, but
the child appears to be spattered with blood.
The al-Qassam Brigade
tweeted a screen shot from Hamas-run al Aqsa TV, showing the mangled
body of a child. "Israel's military kills Palestinian children in cold
blood in #Gaza," the tweet said.
Al-Aqsa TV quoted the health ministry as saying 19 people had been killed, among them six children and two "elderly."
The channel said more
than 180 people have been wounded since the Israeli strikes began this
week in Gaza. Israel has reported several people wounded, including
another three soldiers injured Thursday morning by rockets from Gaza.
Israel denies attacks linked to upcoming election
Hamdan insisted that Israel "started the war."
Rocket fire escalates in Israel, Gaza
What life is like near Gaza border
Blair: 'Israel will retaliate'
'Raining bombs' on Gaza Strip
"We are defending
ourselves," he said, arguing that Netanyahu was looking to cement
support in advance of an election in two months.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak denied that any politics are involved in the decision.
Speaking to CNN, Barak
said Israel has destroyed most of the "heavy long-range rockets" used by
militants in Gaza and is working to "systematically destroy"
installations in which other rockets are produced.
"It will take some time," he said.
Israeli forces are going
after Hamas weapons, storage bunkers, weapons labs and workshops, an
Israeli official told CNN. The official has direct knowledge of Israeli
plans but declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of
the information.
The Israeli army moved nearly a division's worth of troops -- perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 -- to the border, the official said.
While multiple militant
groups are behind the rocket attacks, Israel holds Hamas responsible
ever since it took control of Gaza, Barak said.
Hamas' military wing has
claimed responsibility for numerous operations in the past. The U.S.
government and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist
organization.
Netanyahu issued a
statement Thursday saying, "In recent days and weeks, Hamas and the
other terrorist organizations in Gaza have made normal life impossible
for over 1 million Israelis. No government would tolerate a situation
where nearly a fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of
rockets and missile fire."
He added, "The
terrorists are committing a double war crime. They fire at Israeli
civilians, and they hide behind Palestinian civilians. And by contrast,
Israel takes every measure to avoid civilian casualties."
Ghazi Hamad, Hamas'
deputy foreign minister, told CNN that Hamas was sending rockets toward
Israel's population because Israel thinks "that it is easy to kill
people in Gaza," enter the area and "do everything" it wants in Gaza.
"We send a message to them that Gaza is not an easy bone. ... You can't
eat Gaza in one minute. If you do something, we will react."
Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti said the Israeli government has "proven that it is a government of war and not peace."
Israel is "the oppressor," not the victim, he said.
Concern over possibility of a ground assault
The sudden increase in violence has raised fears of a widening conflict that could lead to an Israeli ground assault.
Tony Blair, envoy for
the Middle East Quartet, which is working to bring about a peace
agreement, said on Thursday: "I don't think we should be of any doubt at
all that if this situation continues and it escalates, it's going to be
really serious and tragic -- not just for Israelis and Palestinians,
but actually it will cause a huge amount of upheaval right across the
region, and this is a region, as you know, that doesn't require more
upheaval right now."
British Foreign
Secretary William Hague issued a statement saying he is "gravely
concerned" and calling on all sides to avoid civilian casualties.
"Hamas bears principal
responsibility for the current crisis. I utterly condemn rocket attacks
from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas and other armed groups. This
creates an intolerable situation for Israeli civilians in southern
Israel, who have the right to live without fear of attack from Gaza. The
rocket attacks also risk worsening the plight of Palestinian civilians
in Gaza, which is already precarious."
Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Fatah movement based in the
West Bank, is cutting short a visit to Europe to follow developments of
"the Israeli aggression on the Gaza strip," PLO Executive Committee
member Saeb Erakat said.
Israel says it has
called thousands of residents in Gaza to warn them of strikes and
dropped leaflets in Gaza warning Palestinian civilians to "avoid being
present in the vicinity of Hamas operatives," the IDF said.
It also uses "roof
knocking" -- targeting a building "with a loud but nonlethal bomb that
warns civilians that they are in the vicinity of a weapons cache or
other target. This method is used to allow all residents to leave the
area before the IDF targets the site with live ammunition."
Roar of planes followed by 'kaboom'
At one point Thursday
morning, 13 rockets were fired in quick succession from Gaza into
Israel. A CNN crew could see trails of smoke as they reported from the
Israeli side of the Erez Crossing on Gaza's northern border.
The crew was forced to take cover after rockets struck near the border crossing.
Later, reporting from Gaza City, the crew witnessed airstrikes and plumes of black smoke in many parts of the city.
Egypt watches with interest
The escalating violence
is likely to further erode Israel's fragile relationship with Egypt,
which recalled its ambassador to Israel on Wednesday in protest over the
ongoing strikes. It also delivered a formal protest to the Israeli
government.
On Thursday, when asked
by CNN's Hala Gorani if treaties between Egypt and Israel are in danger,
the chief of the Egyptian presidential cabinet said no.
"Not at all. Because we
have declared several times, repeatedly, that we abide by our
international commitments," Mohamed Refa'a al-Tahtawi said. "But
respecting a peace treaty does not mean to stay idle or indifferent to
what is going on along our borders.
A spokesman for Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsy said the Arab League will meet Saturday in
emergency session to discuss the violence.
"Egypt is taking all
diplomatic measures with all parties involved to reach some sort of
immediate truce or cease fire," Yaser Ali added.
A senior official in
U.S. President Obama's administration told CNN that the White House is
asking Egypt and Turkey -- two nations that have influence with Hamas --
to urge the group to de-escalate the rocket attacks.
But a Hamas deputy
foreign minister told CNN: "I am in touch with the Egyptians they are
very angry and very upset because they feel that Israel put a knife in
their back" by attacking sites in Gaza.
Egypt's Prime Minister
Hesham Kandil will travel on Friday morning to Gaza with a team of
presidential advisers and ministers to meet with Palestinian officials.
U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki Moon also will go to Egypt and Israel next week, because of the
rising tensions between Israel and Hamas, a Western diplomat told CNN.
The diplomat said the Secretary General has canceled a trip to
Mozambique, Botswana, Seychelles and Mauritius to go to the Middle East.
CNN's Sara Sidner and Talal Abu-Rahma
reported from southern Israel and Gaza City; CNN's Josh Levs and Chelsea
Carter reported from Atlanta; CNN's Jessica Yellin, Saad Abedine and
Joe Vaccarello as well as journalists Per Nyberg and Mohamed Fadel Fahmy
contributed to this report.
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