Twenty people – including nine children – have been killed in airstrikes on Gaza, the health ministry has said.
The youngest victim was 10-years-old, Gaza health officials told as per Independent.
On Monday, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets towards the Jerusalem area and southern Israel, carrying out a threat to punish Israel for violent confrontations with Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, accused the Hamas militant group of crossing a “red line” with its rocket attack on Jerusalem and promised a tough response.
The Israeli army said a civilian in the country’s south suffered mild injuries when a vehicle was struck by an anti-tank missile from Gaza.
Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said the attack on Jerusalem was a response to what he called Israeli “crimes and aggression” in the city. “This is a message the enemy has to understand well,” he said according to Al Jazeera report.
How recent tensions started in Palestine
The tensions in occupied East Jerusalem have been fuelled by the planned forced expulsions of dozens of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where illegal Israeli settlers are looking to take over the properties of Palestinian families.
Residents of the neighbourhood and local and international solidarity activists have attended vigils in recent days to support the Palestinian families under threat of forced expulsions.
The tension’s reason
In the 1967 Six-Day War in which Israel captured East Jerusalem, it also took the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It later occupied East Jerusalem and considers the entire city its capital, a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future state, with East Jerusalem as the capital.
Opinion
As the Hamas group launched rockets on Israel which reported no casualty. In retaliation, Israel killed about 20 Palestinian including nine children. Murder of innocent Palestinian people including children is not the justification for so called retaliation. Israel had crossed all limits of human rights violation against Palestinian people.
The Chenab Times News Desk