Israeli warplanes struck targets in central Gaza overnight from Friday to Saturday, after a day of deadly violence in the West Bank, as unprecedented unrest persists in Israel.
Ten members of the same family were killed Saturday morning in one of these strikes in the west of the Gaza Strip, said Palestinian relief.
The Israeli army for its part announced at least five strikes on the whole of the Gaza Strip.
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At the same time, an American envoy arrived. Senior State Department official for Israeli and Palestinian affairs Hady Amr is due to meet with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem on Saturday before traveling to the occupied West Bank for talks with Palestinian officials. He wants to encourage both sides to achieve "
lasting calm,
" said State Department deputy spokeswoman Jalina Porter. Washington has been criticized for not doing more to end the violence after blocking a UN Security Council meeting that was scheduled for Friday.
Despite intensified diplomatic efforts to end five days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, the Israeli Air Force continued strikes in the coastal enclave overnight, while rockets were launched again from Gaza towards Israel.
Among the victims of this latest round of Israeli shelling on the Palestinian enclave are eight children and two female members of the same family who were in their three-story building located in the Al Shati refugee camp, according to these paramedical sources at Gaza.
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The last balance sheet of the Palestinian authorities reported Friday evening of 126 dead, including 31 children, and 950 injured in the Israeli bombardments on the Gaza Strip since Monday.
Egypt opened its Rafah border post with the Gaza Strip on Saturday to allow entry of ten ambulances carrying seriously injured Palestinians for treatment in Egyptian hospitals, according to medical officials.
More than 2,000 rockets have been launched into Israeli territory since Monday, killing 9 people, including a child and a soldier, and injuring more than 560.
According to the army, the anti-missile shield "
Iron Dome
" intercepted about 90% of these rockets.
"
Not finished yet
"
Despite international calls for de-escalation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that his army will inflict "serious setbacks" on the "terrorist" movement Hamas which controls the Palestinian enclave of Gaza. "
They are paying and will continue to pay dearly. .
It's not over yet
”.
And for Israel, the fronts are multiplying.
In the West Bank, from Nablus to Hebron and throughout the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, Palestinians threw stones, Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at Israeli forces, who retaliated with rubber bullets and, in some cases live bullets.
These clashes with the Israeli army left 11 dead and around 250 wounded on Friday alone, on the Palestinian side, especially during demonstrations of anger and support for the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Further nighttime tensions also erupted in East Jerusalem's Shuafat neighborhood, where masked Palestinian youth protesters set fire to debris, and Israeli police responded with tear gas.
Israeli authorities remain on alert on Saturday as more protests are expected across the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians commemorate the Nakba every May 15, the "
catastrophe
" represented in their eyes by the creation of Israel in 1948, which each year gives rise to violent clashes with the army or Israeli settlers.
Fourth front in the north
The new round of violence was sparked after a barrage of Hamas rockets fired at Israel in "
solidarity
" with the hundreds of Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli police on the Mosque Plaza in East Jerusalem. The clashes at Islam's third holiest site came after days of clashes in East Jerusalem, mainly due to threats of eviction of Palestinian families for the benefit of Jewish settlers.
Israel began bombing Gaza on Monday in response to rocket fire at Jerusalem by the Islamist movement Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in the enclave. On Saturday morning, alarms continue to sound in the south of the country. Israel is also confronted internally with an escalation of inter-communal violence in its "
mixed
"
towns
, where Jews and Arabs usually live and mix, notably in Lod (center), Jaffa near Tel Aviv. or Acre, in the north of the country.
The night from Friday to Saturday, marked by the weekly rest of Shabbat, was nevertheless one of the quietest in Israel since the beginning of the week. While the Israeli army has already mobilized its reservists, a possible fourth front has opened up. Three rockets launched from Syria were heard Friday evening in northern Israel. Earlier, on the Israeli-Lebanese border, a member of Hezbollah participating in a demonstration was killed by gunfire from the Israeli army. Faced with the escalation, the UN Security Council is due to meet on Sunday.