Hamas can end escalation by grounding rockets: UN head

A rocket hit an oil truck near an Ashdod gas station Friday, seriously injuring one man.

NEW YORK — UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said an end to Hamas rocket fire was the only means of preventing an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

“Today we face the risk of an all out escalation in Israel and Gaza with the threat of a ground offensive still palpable and preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing,” Ban said Thursday at a Security Council session on the latest outbreak of hostilities.

Ban’s casting of the responsibility for ending the conflict principally on Hamas was unusual for a UN official.

Palestinian and Israeli representatives addressed the session of the council, the only body with decisions that have the force of international law.

Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, played the sound of a warning siren during his address. “Imagine having only 15 seconds to find a bomb shelter,” he said. “Now imagine doing it with small children or elderly parents or an ailing friend.”

Israel launched a counteroffensive on Thursday after an intensification of rocket fire. More than a hundred Palestinians have been killed so far in strikes by Israeli combat aircraft on suspected terrorist targets.

On Friday, a rocket hit an oil truck near the coastal city of Ashdod and its explosion seriously wounded a man.

At least eight Palestinians, including a 10-year-old girl were killed overnight Friday in air strikes, international media reported, quoting Palestinian emergency care officials.

The explosion near Ashdod was the result of a volley of eight rockets launched from Gaza on Friday at Israel’s southern coastal plain. The man sustained life-threatening injuries to his legs from the explosion, which happened near a gas station, Army Radio reported. Another two people were injured from shrapnel from the same explosion.


 

Rocket damage in Be'er Sheva


Earlier on Friday, militants in Lebanon fired mortar rounds into Israel as it entered the fourth day of its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The rounds exploded near Metulla at the northern tip of the Galilee early on Friday, but resulted in no casualties and no damage to property, Army Radio reported. It was the first time since the launch of Operation Protective Edge in Gaza that Israel was targeted from the north.

The Israel Defence Forces fired back into Lebanon, hitting an area close to the Lebanese village of Hatzbiyah. Lebanese media reported that blood was found at the site from which the fire was launched into Israel, suggesting casualties from the Israeli response.

Also on Friday, projectile detection systems set off alarm sirens in Haifa for the first time since the start of the operation, which began earlier this week after Hamas militants launched dozens of rockets into Israel’s south. No hits were detected. Haifa City readied and opened its shelters on Wednesday, as Hamas fired rockets at Zichron Ya’akov, a suburb of the northern city.

A woman in her seventies collapsed and died on Friday of heart failure while running to a shelter in Wadi Nisnas, a neighborhood in downtown Haifa with Jewish and Arab residents.

Approximately 350 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel, 90 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome projectile defence system, which engages inbound objects only if their trajectory is likely to result in impact in populated areas.

Israeli aircraft have launched more than 1,000 strikes on suspected terrorist sites in Gaza. Palestinian emergency care officials have said at least 100 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in the attacks.

Of the eight killed overnight, the New York Times reported , five were members of a single family in the southern city of Rafah, and one was a ten year old girl in the same town.

Hamas has also warned airlines to stay away from Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, threatening to target it with rockets.

“The armed wing of Hamas movement has decided to respond to the Israeli aggression and we warn you against carrying out flights to Ben-Gurion Airport, which will be one of our targets today because it also hosts a military air base,” Reuters quoted a statement by Hamas’ Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades as saying Friday.

Hamas claimed earlier that it already had fired at least one rocket toward the airport, although no such hit was reported.

The terrorist group said it had issued the warning so that airlines could avoid injury to passengers.

Several rockets from the Gaza Strip were fired toward the greater Tel Aviv area on Friday morning. The Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted three projectiles. No injuries were reported.

Incoming air traffic was halted as sirens were sounded in the area, an airport spokesperson told the Jerusalem Post. Flight traffic was resumed as normal after the sirens subsided.

A spokesman for the Airports Authority said that a siren had sounded at Ben-Gurion and that all activity had stopped for about 10 minutes, but that the siren was part of a general alert in the Tel Aviv area and not a direct threat to the airport.